Particle Accelerator Summer Camp

In August 2025, I made the journey to Northern California for the long-anticipated US Particle Accelerator School (USPAS). It is 44 year old tradition in the particle accelerator community. It packs a punch, delivering semester long university courses in just two weeks. Most are actual credit courses which can be transferred from the sponsoring university to your own institution. Topics offered every session are the undergraduate Fundamentals of Accelerator Physics and its graduate equivalent: Accelerator Physics. Specialized courses are just one week with Cryogenic Systems and Plasma Acceleration being among them in the summer 2025 session. I opted for Classical Mechanics and Electromagnetism for Accelerator Physics as my very first USPAS course.

After sightseeing tour for San Francisco, I headed for Rohenert Park, 1.5 hours from the Bay. Arriving, I loved the Mediterranean Revival style hotel with outdoor pool, hot tub and pickleball courts but could not help but wonder about the far-flung location not seemingly connected to any accelerator facility. Then next morning, class began with the normal introductions and overviews. We went through topics such as simple harmonic oscillators, the Lagrangian and canonical transformations. It was gratifying to get an idea why finding the ever elusive generating function was important in a context that I cared about. It was a great class with quality instructors, but I personally found I did not have the confidence to continue the course. This was interesting case for me, considering the number of times I had the same feelings in my physics undergraduate studies yet stayed the course and eventually prevailed.

The USPAS officials were very receptive and I was able to switch into a course called Concepts of Accelerator Science. “Concepts? Yes, that’s exactly what I need” Part of the reason seeking employment as an accelerator operator was to learn about this field from the ground up. I wanted to push the buttons as well as study the equations that make the accelerator go round. This class had an aggressively scholarly approach. “Understand, question and discuss to your hearts content… we have the time!”

Some highlights were:

• Layman framing of common beam physics terms like emittance and Twiss parameters which made them more than just symbols and formulas for me.
• Getting an overview and comparison of particle sources particularly photocathodes. Learning that they set the floor for emittance.
• Learning the general “truths” about supporting system like water cooling, cryogenic and safety/shielding, so now I know more about them in general and not the peculiarities my own facility. For example, I did not know new synchrotrons are designed with no exposed conductors, which reduced the safety burden.
• Side conversation with a hardware engineer about the basics of ASICs and FFPGAs. Things like timing and trigger systems depend on chips. Custom ones (ASICS) are more expensive than paying a few engineers to set up programmable ones (FFPGA)

Not only did we discuss, there were also had hands on lab exercises. The radiofrequency cavity laboratory was my absolute favourite because I cleared up some misunderstanding I had about these very essential components of particle accelerators.

The week ended with a group presentation. My group did a comparison between the facilities that we work at. It was quite interesting to get a glimpse of what the defense world is like and conversely my teammates were intrigued by the openness and accessibility of a publicly funded user facility. Overall, what they about USPAS is true; it is an intense academic experience. I do look forward to doing the for-credit courses, either at USPAS or trying CERN’s version in Europe. My advice for when I eventually do: Preview the course content as much as possible, work with others and you catch the hot tub when you can.