The Western Michigan University (WMU) accelerator laboratory plays a key role in helping the department of physics meet its research and educational goals, providing the basis for faculty research, Ph.D. dissertation and M.A. thesis research, undergraduate laboratories, and outreach activities. Department of physics faculty utilize the accelerator for a broad spectrum of research projects in the areas of atomic physics, condensed matter physics, nanoscience, nuclear physics, and physics applications, with much of this research receiving external support. Accelerator research has resulted in numerous publications in leading journals and has formed the basis for several graduate and undergraduate student research projects. The accelerator is functional and heavily used, but the existing ion sources are obsolete and unreliable. Acquisition and implementation of the proposed ion sources will greatly improve accelerator operation and reliability, make more beamtime available, and complement the recent installation of a Pelletron charging system (purchased with funds from an earlier NSF-MRI grant). Moreover, the new ion sources will enhance the capabilities of the laboratory by providing a wider array of ion beam species with higher intensities. The training of future scientists is a particularly important function of the laboratory. In this regard, students are provided unique hands-on experiences with major research instrumentation in close collaboration with faculty mentors. Such experiences are not often available to most physics students, especially those at the undergraduate level or those still in high school.
During recent years, the laboratory has formed the basis for several Ph.D. dissertation projects, M.A. thesis projects, Honors College thesis projects for physics majors, and the senior mentorship projects of high school students from the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center. Apart from these research and research training uses, the laboratory has been used every semester for more than 30 years as an instructional tool in connection with the department's undergraduate modern physics laboratory that is typically taken by sophomore level students, and as part of an advanced laboratory course taken by upper level undergraduate physics majors and graduate students. Additionally, students from area high schools and colleges visit the laboratory to make use of the accelerator as part of their physics curricula. During its history the accelerator has served as an educational resource for literally thousands of university and high school students. It is anticipated that, in addition to expanding the research and educational uses of the accelerator, the upgraded facility will help in the recruitment of students to the university and help to attract additional outside collaborators. Presently, researchers from other institutions, nationally and internationally (Argonne, Michigan State University, the Hahn-Meitner-Institut, Berlin, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, and the Institute for Nuclear Research, Debrecen, Hungary), come to WMU to collaborate with department faculty on projects utilizing the laboratory and its resources. Through its diversity of uses and applications, the WMU accelerator laboratory closely integrates research with education in a manner that is rarely encountered at most universities. The upgraded facility will help to enhance the learning environment with greater access to state-of-the-art instrumentation.
