Reader

JA 7.11, Department of Physics,
University of Strathclyde,
107 Rottenrow,
Glasgow, G4 0NG, Scotland, U.K.

Telephone: +44 141 548 4727
Fax: +44 141 552 2891
e-mail: b.w.j.mcneil-at-strath.ac.uk

Biography

Brian McNeil is an expert in the field of Free Electron Laser physics theory and design. His publications focus on collective effects electron-light interactions as a source of coherent radiation and in particular X-ray Free Electron Lasers. He has been involved in all FEL facility design studies initiated by STFC in the UK from the mid 1980’s, and he is currently Work Package leader for FEL Output Simulation and Optimisation for the UK XFEL design research. Some recent relevant FEL publication highlights include methods to reduce X-ray pulses into the few-cycle limit, increase their brightness of by two orders of magnitude, wide bandwidth operation, development of the first 3D broad bandwidth, unaveraged FEL simulation code Puffin, a quantum description of the FEL for possible coherent gamma-ray output, and an invited Nature article to mark the first lasing of an X-ray FEL at SLAC. He has served on a number of International conference committees. More recently, McNeil contributed as a coordinator to the STFC 2017 Accelerator Strategic Review. McNeil’s group were recently funded by an EPSRC Software for the Future-II grant (Grant Ref: EP/M011607/1) to develop an start-to-end FEL simulation software package. The software is now being adopted and used by designers at EU XFEL, LCLS-II and others. McNeil is currently the PhD supervisor of two students: Jenny Morgan is in a joint programme with Raubenheimer and Hemsing of Stanford investigating orbital angular momentum and ‘structured light’ output from a FEL and Racha Ponchalee is a student from the Thai light source investigating Regenerative Amplified FELs.

Research Interests

Future Light Sources