SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory operated by Stanford University under the contract DE-AC02-76SF00515. The lab is located in Menlo Park, California, approximately 25 miles (40 km) northwest of San Francisco. SLAC’s main facility is the linear accelerator (linac), which can accelerate electrons and positrons up to 50 GeV. The laboratory also houses three other accelerators: the PEP-II asymmetric e+/e− collider, the BaBar detector used in studies of CP violation, and LCLS-II, a hard X-ray free electron laser. Research at SLAC includes particle physics, astrophysics, cosmology, synchrotron radiation research (including materials science and nanoscience), bioinformatics and genomics.
In addition to its scientific mission, SLAC operates Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), a third-generation synchrotron light source that provides high brightness ultraviolet to soft x-ray photons for basic and applied research in many disciplines including biology/medicine, chemistry/materials science/nanotechnology engineering/environmental science as well as physics.
The name “Stanford Linear Accelerator Center” was formally changed to “SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory” on October 1st 2009 following US Congress approval during that year’s energy bill process; this change formally recognized long standing contributions made by the Department of Energy (DOE) who have been major financial supporters of the facility since its inception over fifty years ago. However despite this name change Stanford University still provide management oversight of day to day operations through their contract with DOE.
The site occupies 486 acres (~2km²) originally set aside for Stanfords campus expansion in 1951 though only ~100 acres (~0.4km²) are actually developed with buildings & infrastructure; much of the undeveloped land is used for animal grazing or has been left in its natural state as open space preserve – there are plans to further develop some these areas however no timeline has been set for this work . There are currently around 2200 employees working at SLAC with just over half being scientists & engineers; another 500 contractors are also on site bringing the total number close to 3000 people . In addition there are often around 1500 visiting scientists & engineers from other institutions worldwide carrying out experiments or collaborating on projects .