National Laboratories
The great physics labs of the world — from the Illinois prairie to the Swiss Alps. Where the biggest machines meet the deepest questions.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
America's premier particle physics lab. Home of the Tevatron — once the world's highest-energy collider — Fermilab now leads global neutrino science with DUNE, runs the anomalous Muon g-2 experiment, and serves as the US hub for LHC computing.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Home of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world's most powerful X-ray free-electron laser. SLAC's two-mile linear accelerator enabled three Nobel Prizes in physics and continues to pioneer ultrafast science.
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Home of RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which creates and studies quark-gluon plasma — matter as it existed microseconds after the Big Bang. The National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS-II) serves thousands of users across biology, materials, and energy research.
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne's Advanced Photon Source (APS) is one of the brightest X-ray sources in the Western Hemisphere, used for drug discovery, materials design, and geoscience. The lab has a leading role in battery technology, fusion energy, and exascale computing.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and High Flux Isotope Reactor make Oak Ridge the world's top neutron science facility. ORNL also operates Frontier — the world's fastest supercomputer — and is the birthplace of nuclear reactor technology.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Founded by Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron. Berkeley Lab leads the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) mapping 35 million galaxies, operates the Advanced Light Source, and has spawned 16 Nobel laureates.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Jefferson Lab's Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) fires electrons into nuclei to map the quark-gluon structure of protons and neutrons with unprecedented precision. Key experiments probe confinement, form factors, and QCD dynamics.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Home of the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos today leads nuclear stockpile stewardship, develops materials science at extreme conditions, and runs cutting-edge research in plasma physics, neutron science, and quantum information.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
In 2022, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved fusion ignition for the first time in history — delivering more energy from fusion than the laser energy delivered to the target. LLNL leads the science of high-energy-density plasmas and stockpile stewardship.
National Institute of Standards & Technology
NIST maintains the physical constants that define the SI unit system and runs the world's most accurate atomic clocks. NIST-F2 is so precise it would lose less than one second in 300 million years. The NIST Center for Neutron Research serves condensed matter and biological science.
European Organization for Nuclear Research
The largest particle physics laboratory in the world. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) discovered the Higgs boson in 2012 and continues to search for physics beyond the Standard Model. CERN is also home to ALPHA (antihydrogen), ISOLDE (exotic nuclei), and the birthplace of the World Wide Web.
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron
DESY operates the European XFEL — the world's most brilliant X-ray laser, capable of 27,000 pulses per second — and the FLASH free-electron laser. Its HERA collider produced the most precise measurements of the proton's inner structure. DESY is a hub for detector and accelerator technology.
GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research
GSI has discovered six new chemical elements (110–115), including darmstadtium and roentgenium, and pioneered heavy-ion cancer therapy now treating thousands of patients worldwide. The FAIR accelerator complex, under construction, will become the world's most intense heavy ion beam facility.
Paul Scherrer Institute
Switzerland's largest research institute operates the Swiss Light Source, the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source (SINQ), and the world's most intense low-energy muon beam. PSI is a global leader in proton therapy and searches for rare muon decays that could signal new physics.
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
INFN coordinates Italian physics at CERN and runs the Gran Sasso underground laboratory — the world's largest underground physics facility. Gran Sasso hosts BOREXINO (solar neutrinos), XENON (dark matter), and OPERA (tau neutrino appearance), shielded from cosmic rays by 1,400 m of rock.
Canada's Particle Accelerator Centre
Home of the world's largest cyclotron (520 MeV proton beam), TRIUMF produces rare isotopes for nuclear physics experiments and medical radioisotopes for cancer imaging. The ARIEL facility will expand rare-isotope beam capabilities dramatically, and TRIUMF scientists contribute to ATLAS at CERN.
Institut Laue-Langevin
The world's most intense neutron source. ILL's high-flux reactor produces neutrons used by more than 2,000 scientists per year to study the structure of materials, proteins, and magnetic systems. It also runs precision searches for a neutron electric dipole moment — a test of fundamental symmetries.
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
The largest scientific experiment ever built — a 35-nation collaboration constructing a tokamak designed to produce 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input heating, demonstrating net energy gain for the first time. ITER will not generate electricity but will prove the plasma physics and engineering required for commercial fusion reactors.
High Energy Accelerator Research Organization
KEK's Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider searches for new physics in B-meson decays with 40× the luminosity of its predecessor. KEK also operates Photon Factory synchrotron light sources and the J-PARC Muon Science Facility, and leads the global T2K long-baseline neutrino experiment.
RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science
RIKEN's Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF) is the world's most powerful facility for rare isotope production. RIKEN scientists synthesized element 113 (nihonium) — the first element discovered in Asia — and conduct frontier research in nuclear structure, astrophysical nucleosynthesis, and exotic nuclei.
Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS
China's flagship particle physics laboratory. The Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC-II) and BESIII detector have made world-leading measurements of charmonium states and tau lepton physics. IHEP also operates the CSNS spallation neutron source and is planning the Circular Electron-Positron Collider (CEPC).
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research
An international intergovernmental organization with 18 member states. JINR's FLNR (Flerov Lab) synthesized elements 114–118 in collaboration with Livermore, including flerovium and oganesson — the heaviest element ever observed. The NICA collider complex will study dense baryonic matter.
National Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute"
Russia's leading nuclear research center, founded in 1943. Kurchatov Institute built the world's first nuclear power plant and pioneered the tokamak concept (T-3) that became the global blueprint for fusion reactors. Today it operates synchrotron light sources and contributes to ITER.
P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
One of Russia's oldest and most prestigious physics institutions, home to 14 Nobel Prize winners. Lebedev physicists invented the laser independently (Prokhorov and Basov, Nobel 1964), developed Cherenkov radiation theory (Tamm and Frank, Nobel 1958), and lead world-class astrophysics and quantum optics research.