Richard D'Arcy to join faculty detail

Richard D’Arcy will join the John Adams Institute (JAI) as Associate Professor of accelerator physics at Oxford University. Richard completed his PhD in particle-accelerator physics from University College London in 2012; his thesis was on fixed-field alternating-gradient accelerators with application to particle therapy and muon accelerators. After postdocs at RAL and Fermilab Richard became a DESY Research Fellow in 2015, working on the particle-beam-driven plasma-wakefield experiment, FLASHForward, with a focus on beamline design and diagnostic development. In 2020 he became Group Leader for Beam-Driven Plasma Accelerators, leading a large team of students, postdoc, engineers, and technicians. Richard’s research focuses on the ‘luminosity question’, exploring and understanding the science of plasma accelerators in order to boost the number of bunches plasma-wakefield schemes can accelerate per second towards that required for application to particle colliders and free-electron lasers. His most recent results demonstrate that plasma accelerators can in principle accelerate tens of millions of particle bunches per second, limited by the fundamental process of long-term plasma evolution. His research at the JAI, beginning in June 2023, will concentrate on answering the outstanding questions required to scale up the current experimental state of the art (ten bunches per second) to as close to this fundamental limit as possible. JAI Director Professor Philip Burrows said: ‘Richard D’Arcy is one of the most talented accelerator physicists of his generation and we are delighted to welcome him to the JAI family. We look forward to working together to spearhead the development of plasma-based wakefield acceleration technologies; these have the potential to transform our ability to deliver particle beams that could revolutionise capabilities in science, medicine and industry.’