Transforming the brightness of beams available to science, medicine, and industry.

Our overarching goal

CBB's overarching research goal is to increase the intensity, or brightness, of beams of charged particles by a factor of 100 while decreasing the cost of key accelerator technologies. Research within our three themes, Beam Production, Beam Acceleration, and Beam Dynamics and Control converge to achieve these goals, as seen in in our Research Ecosystem. 

Team Science is the foundation of our success.

The Center for Bright Beams joins researchers from diverse fields at eight universities and three national labs, who are working together to gain the fundamental understanding needed to advance accelerator technology, benefiting a wide range of accelerator applications.

Investing in the next generation of accelerator scientists.

We believe in diversifying the pipeline of future scientists and actively recruit faculty, graduate students, and postdocs from diverse backgrounds.

Summer undergraduates, including students from underrepresented groups in our Research Experience for Undergraduates programs, get hands-on laboratory or computational experience under the guidance of a trained mentor, and present their results at CBB theme meetings.
Our graduate students and postdocs carry out cutting edge research in the context of interdisciplinary team science and participate in professional development workshops. They present their work not only at theme meetings, but also at national and international conferences, and publish their work in scientific journals. Our students actively participate in outreach activities that further enhance their skill at communicating their research to their colleagues and to students in K-12. CBB graduates, who are prepared to be leaders in their field, are taking positions at national labs, in industry and in academia. See our alumni.

Transferring our knowledge.

CBB transfers knowledge to our industrial and national laboratory partners to help improve the performance and reduce the cost of accelerator technologies. See our patents.