The University of Melbourne has an established accelerator physics group in the Experimental Particle Physics department. Headed by Dr. Roger Rassool and Dr. Mark Boland, the group conducts research into state-of-the-art accelerator instrumentation for the advancement of accelerator sciences. The group works closely with the Australian Synchrotron, where a large portion of the research is conducted.

Current Research

CLIC damping ring
The proposed Compact Linear Collider (CLIC), organised to be built at CERN, will have centre-of-mass energies of 3TeV giving it comparable energies to that of the LHC without the hassle of parton distributions. Current University of Melbourne PhD student, Kent Wootton, is researching into developments in the damping ring of CLIC and trying to reduce the vertical emittance of the beam by reducing the betatron motion coupling. The result of this reduced vertical emittance will be an increase in the luminosity of the beam and prospectively open up a new world of collider beam dynamics in which flattened beams are accelerated rather than current circular beams.

Head-tail Instabilities in circular accelerators
In circular accelerators, like the Australian Synchrotron and the LHC, instabilities can occur as a result of resonances. In collaboration with CERN, Thomas Lucas, under the supervisor Dr. Ralph Steinhagen, has worked on developing a head-tail instabilities monitor which detects the intra-bunch instability caused by the coupling of the particle beams wake field and the beams natural longitudinal oscillation.