Caolionn O'Connell aims for higher energies
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In between trail-running expeditions through California's Portola Valley, Caolionn O'Connell can be found luring electrons to surf waves of energy so powerful they rip matter apart. Her group's prototype technologies boost electrons on waves of plasma traveling at nearly the speed of light as a kind of "plasma afterburner" for existing particle accelerators.
Caolionn is a fourth-year PhD student from Stanford University working at the DOE's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. After undergraduate studies at Harvard University and projects at Fermilab's CDF experiment, she longed for the bright skies and warm weather of her home state. So she returned to California, not one to let travel stand in the way of her passion for the outdoors. Named by her aunt from a traditional Irish fairy-tale, Caolionn jokes that she wishes her name meant "strong and independent woman" rather than the more prosaic but accurate "lass".
Her project accelerates electrons to much higher energies in much less space than existing technologies. "Fitting new higher energy facilities near existing labs is difficult because of how much room they would take up," Caolionn says. "Using plasma wakefield accelerators, we will boost electrons to energies 100 times as high in the same space."
"If we achieve our target acceleration gradients, we could fit an accelerator of SLAC's energy reach on a tabletop," Caolionn says, "It is a tremendously exciting project." sitting outside her control room at the end of the two-mile long SLAC accelerator. Caolionn's work on the SLAC E164 and E164X projects will contribute to the "Next Next Linear Collider", a leapfrogging project that looks beyond the next Linear Collider, top of the DOE's mid-term priority list for future facilities.
Torn between getting back to her experiment and going running, she resolves to head back to the control room but to find time for physical exertion after the mental exertion of the working day.