CLARA Successfully Completes First Friendly User Experiments at 250 MeV
18 Jun 2026
Between January – April 2026, the CLARA facility at Daresbury Laboratory successfully hosted a first run of friendly user experiments at its design energy of 250 MeV.
Between January – April 2026, the CLARA facility at Daresbury Laboratory successfully hosted a first run of friendly user experiments at its design energy of 250 MeV.
This follows the installation of a major upgrade to the CLARA accelerator between 2022 – 2024, followed by an extended period of technical commissioning throughout 2025.
Over the first four months of the year, researchers from across the UK and Europe visited CLARA to carry out five separate experiments related to advanced beam diagnostics, novel acceleration techniques, and cancer therapy using very high energy electrons (VHEE).
Together, their studies exploited the full capabilities of the CLARA accelerator, requiring high-brightness electron beams with up to 250 pC per bunch, at repetition rates up to 100 Hz, with bunch lengths as short as 5 fs. Most experiments were carried out in the new, separately-shielded Full Energy Beam Exploitation (FEBE) user area, which can be configured to host a wide range of challenging and impactful experiments.
The completion of the first CLARA user run marks a significant milestone for ASTeC, the Cockcroft Institute, Daresbury Laboratory, and UK accelerator science more generally. It brings the facility closer to its stated ambition of being one of Europe’s most advanced medium-energy electron beam facilities.
Further friendly user experiments are planned at CLARA for later in 2026. An initial round of experiments in July will explore the deployment of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) tools on CLARA. An additional experiment at the end of the year will combine the CLARA electron beam with pulses from a high-power (120 TW) laser, which has recently been installed above the FEBE user area. The final elements of the laser transport to the FEBE area are currently being installed, with commissioning expected to be complete by the Autumn of this year.
An overview of CLARA and its first user experiments was recently presented at the IPAC26 conference in Deauville, France. The presentation materials and conference proceedings can be found here and here.
