ALICE (Accelerators and Lasers In Combined Experiments) is a prototype accelerator which has been designed and built at Daresbury Laboratory. It was formerly known as ERLP (Energy Recovery Linac Prototype).
The heart of this new facility at Daresbury Laboratory, is an Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) accelerator and a hugely powerfulmulti-terawatt laser.
The ERL is the first of a new type of accelerator to be built in Europe. Extremely high quality bunches of electrons are produced by intense light pulses from a green laser bombarding a semiconductor surface. This electron beam is then accelerated to 35 million Volts through superconducting radiofrequency cavities. These bunches travelling at near light-speed are then compressed, to stimulate the production of intense, short pulses of light.
This unique facility will be used to investigate and overcome the challenges presented to scientists in designing and building future generations of accelerators like the UK’s proposed new light source.
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The intense light produced from ALICE can be used to probe in minute detail, the inner workings of physical processes at the atomic level. Such studies can assist in solving some of the major challenges of the modern world - for instance, developing more effective drugs or designing more efficient solar cells.
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Terahertz radiation for the study of biological and medical problems
The construction of a terahertz beamline from the ALICE accelerator into a tissue culture facility for the growth of human tissue has created a unique facility for the study of biological systems. The terahertz beamline will be the most intense source of broad-band THz radiation in Europe, the third most intense in the world and the only one equipped with a capability for the study of live human cells 
Fig. 3: The photograph above shows the upper floor of the tissue culture facility. The THz beamline that directs the THz radiation from the energy recovery linear accelerator to the TCF is illustrated on the right.
The first priority of the research programme will be to establish the safe level of human exposure to THz radiation. The development of security screening systems based on THz radiation means that humans will be increasingly exposed to THz radiation. It is important to establish the safe level of repeated low-level exposure to radiation in this frequency range.Low power THz systems are already in use for the characterisation of cancerous tissue removed in surgery and are being developed for the diagnosis of skin cancers. Unfortunately the low power levels available with such systems, which are in the mW to mW range, make it difficult to establish clear clinical protocols. The high peak power available with the THz beamline, 70 kW, should make it possible to resolve these problems and may lead to the development of low cost portable instruments for diagnosis and tissue characterisation.
In the longer term it is planned to use the facility in combination with optical techniques in pump-probe experiments designed to explore mechanisms of protein folding and investigate theoretical ideas on the drivers for self-organisation in biological systems.
The programme is lead by Professor Peter Weightman of the physics department of Liverpool University and colleagues from the Daresbury Laboratory and the departments of clinical engineering and cell biology and the school of biological sciences from the University of Liverpool.
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