This is the home page of the Scottish Centre for the Application of Plasma-based Accelerators (SCAPA)
The SCAPA research centre is a major initiative within the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) project. Facilities will include a state-of-the-art laboratory provided with high power lasers, laser-driven plasma accelerators and radiation sources. Research will be focussed on the development and application of next generation accelerator technology.
SCAPA will use high intensity, femtosecond laser pulses as the driver for novel high brightness sources of high energy particle beams (electrons, protons, neutrons and light ions) and radiation pulses (THz, infra-red, X-rays and gamma rays). By working with our partners and clients, SCAPA will use these beams in a variety of industrial, medical and scientific applications, such as electron and X-ray diffraction, radiation detector development, nuclear medicine, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, medical imaging and molecular biology. It will be possible to test materials under extreme conditions similar to those encountered in nuclear fission and fusion reactors (ITER, HiPER), as well as contribute to the development of new types of nuclear fission reactors, such as ADSRs and ThorEA.