Cockcroft Institute

The Cockcroft Institute exists to provide the intellectual focus, educational infrastructure, and the essential scientific and technological facilities for accelerator science and technology research and development.

This will enable UK scientists and engineers to take an internationally leading role in accelerator science and technology, advancing the scientific frontier into uncharted domains and returning scientific rewards of the highest order.

The Cockcroft Institute brings together the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester, STFC’s Accelerator Science and Technology Centre (ASTeC) and relevant industries. Through collaboration between academia, national laboratories, industry and local economy, it creates a focal point for the best accelerator scientists, engineers, educators and industrialists to lead the UK’s participation in flagship international experiments.

Key facts

Among the facilities and capabilities are:

Versatile Electron Linear Accelerator (VELA)
Accelerators and Lasers In Combined Experiments (ALICE )
Microwave and Radio Frequency Laboratory
Superconducting Radio-Frequency Laboratory (SRF)
Laser Test Laboratory
Fibre-optic and Solid-state Ultrafast (femtosecond)
High Power Lasers
Optics Metrology Laboratory
Vacuum Science Laboratory
Photocathode Preparation Laboratory
Surface Science and Novel Coatings
Magnet Technology
Cryogenics
Mechanical and electrical engineering and IT facilities
Access to University of Manchester’s Nano Science and
Photon Science Centre facilities
Access to University of Liverpool’s medical facilities and atomic interferometer laboratory