Abstract This article examines the most recent history of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, with particular emphasis on how this laboratory shifted its research program from accelerator-based particle physics towards astroparticle physics, cosmology and multi-disciplinary photon science. Photon science became the central experimental research program through a series of changes in the organisational, scientific, and infrastructural set-up and in its science policy context. The article shows that SLAC’s reinvention unfolded in a science policy context in which funding priorities drifted towards the materials sciences and the life sciences at the expense of nuclear and particle physics, which had dominated science budgets during the Cold War. SLAC took a lead position in this global development by partly dismantling and also redeploying scientific and technical capabilities from its particle physics program for these new fields, thus, providing novel experimental facilities for user communities to expand across academia and industry.

中文翻译：

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SLAC 国家加速器实验室的改造，1992-2012

摘要 本文考察了 SLAC 国家加速器实验室的最新历史，特别强调了该实验室如何将其研究计划从基于加速器的粒子物理学转向天体粒子物理学、宇宙学和多学科光子科学。通过组织、科学和基础设施设置及其科学政策背景的一系列变化，光子科学成为中心实验研究计划。文章表明，SLAC 的重塑是在科学政策背景下展开的，在该背景下，资金优先转向材料科学和生命科学，而牺牲了冷战期间主导科学预算的核物理和粒子物理。