Particle Accelerator Physics

The Particle Accelerator Physics group is a part of the John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science, a joint venture between Royal Holloway, the University of Oxford and Imperial College London.

Particle accelerators are complex machines used to create beams of high energy particles, these could be used for industrial processing, treating cancer and particle physics at the world’s largest particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Switzerland. Accelerators are challenging systems, and research and development is needed to create higher energy, more stable, efficient and performant machines.

Accelerator physics is a wide discipline encompassing mechanics, relativity, particle physics, electromagnetism, optics, material science, dynamical systems and instrumentation.

Research

The main research areas at Royal Holloway involve:

the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) — the upgrade to the LHC,
beam loss simulations using Beam Delivery Simulation (BDSIM) software, a Monte Carlo particle tracking code developed at Royal Holloway,
design and modelling of medical accelerator facilities which use proton and X-rays to treat cancer, including the proposed Laser-hybrid Accelerator for Radiobiological Applications (LhARA),
beam instrumentation through the development of devices to measure the position, charge, length, energy, and polarisation of high energy beams, and
advanced pyroelectric acceleration techniques.

Members

Academics

Prof Stephen Gibson	Group Leader, Deputy Director of the John Adams Institute (JAI), involved in HL-LHC at CERN, and the Front End Test Stand (FETS) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL)
Dr Pavel Karataev	Beam radiation and instrumentation
Dr William Shields	Medical accelerator physics, including the Laser-hybrid Accelerator for Radiobiological Applications (LhARA), lead developer of BDSIM
Prof Stewart Boogert	Visiting Professor, Lead developer of BDSIM

Senior scientists

Mr Gary Boorman	Senior Research Officer
Dr Alexey Lyapin	Visiting Senior Research Officer

Researchers

Dr Siobhan Alden	Research Fellow in Particle Accelerator Physics
Dr Majid Ali	Research Associate
Dr Alessio Bosco	Research Associate
Dr Bjorn Lindstrom	Research Associate

Research students

Max Bosman	PhD student
Alec Clapp	PhD student
Diya Dipac	PhD student
Luke Eddowes	MSc Physics by Research student
Tiago Fernandes de Nóbrega	PhD student
Alex Keyken	PhD student
Mark McCallum	PhD student
Robert Murphy	PhD student
Natsune Nishi	MSc Physics by Research student
Giusy Passarelli	PhD student
Matt Pereira	PhD student

Alumni

Dr Florian Stummer	PhD completed in 2025
Dr Majid Ali	PhD completed in 2025
Dr Hélène Guérin	PhD completed in 2024
Dr Daniele Butti	PhD completed in 2024
Thomas Bass	MSc by Research completed in 2024
Dr Siobhan Alden	PhD completed in 2023
Dr Theodoros Christodoulou	PhD completed in 2023
Dr Helena Lefebvre	PhD completed in 2023
Dr Daniel Harryman	PhD completed in 2022
Dr Gian Luigi D'Alessandro	PhD completed in 2022
Dr Kirill Fedorov	PhD completed in 2022
Dr Andrei Oleinik	PhD completed in 2022
Dr Niki Vitoratou	PhD completed in 2021
Srinidhi Rajagopalan	MSc Euromasters completed in 2021
Dr Thomas Hofmann	Honorary Research Associate
Dr Robert Kieffer	Project Associate at CERN
Dr Andrey Abramov	PhD completed in 2020
Dr Swann Levasseur	PhD completed in 2020
Dr Stuart Walker	PhD completed in 2020
Dr Michele Bergamaschi	PhD completed in 2019
Dr Aiveen Finn	PhD completed in 2018
Dr Alberto Arteche	PhD completed in 2018
Dr Lorraine Bobb	PhD completed in 2017
Dr William Shields	PhD completed in 2016
Dr Konstantin Kruchinin	PhD completed in 2015
Dr Frankie Cullinan	PhD completed in 2014
Dr Rob Ainsworth	PhD completed in 2014
Dr Nirav Joshi	PhD completed in 2013
Dr Tom Aumeyr	PhD completed in 2013
Dr Konstantin Lekomtsev	PhD completed in 2012
Dr Lawrence Deacon	PhD completed in 2009

Events

The John Adams Institute (JAI) holds two annual events in which the group's scientific achievements and project updates are presented: an Advisory Board meeting, and the JAI-Fest. These are held at either of the JAI member institutes including Royal Holloway. Some recent events held at Royal Holloway include:

Selected publications

Investigating the Impact of alternative LHC optics on accelerator backgrounds at FASER using BDSIM. IPAC2025 Proceedings, JACoW Publishing, p. 2341–2344, 08.06.2025.
Background mitigation concepts for Super-NaNu. JACoW, IPAC2024, TUPC63, p. 1123–1126, 24.05.2024.
Design and experimental verification of a bunch length monitor based on coherent Cherenkov diffraction radiation. Physical Review Research, Vol. 7, 013193, 24.02.2025.
Quasi-continuous X-ray generation in LiTaO₃-based pyroelectric accelerator driven by periodically varying temperature. Scientific Reports, Vol. 15, 31209, 25.08.2025.
Stability of electrons and X-rays generated in a pyroelectric accelerator. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 169134, 24.01.2024.
A novel approach to seamless simulations of compact hadron therapy systems for self-consistent evaluation of dosimetric and radiation protection quantities. EPL, Vol. 132, No. 5, 50004, 30.12.2020.
LhARA: The Laser-hybrid Accelerator for Radiobiological Applications. Frontiers in Physics, Vol. 8, 567738, 29.09.2020.
Pyg4ometry: A Python library for the creation of Monte Carlo radiation transport physical geometries. Computer Physics Communications, Vol. 272, 108228, 03.2022.