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About

Mark Erickson is a leading engineer and applied physicist specializing in advanced plasma coating technologies for particle accelerator vacuum systems. His core research focuses on mitigating two critical performance-limiting phenomena in high-energy colliders: electron clouds and unacceptable ohmic heating. Erickson’s major contribution is the development of robotic, in-situ plasma deposition devices—often described as "magnetron moles"—capable of applying thick, low-secondary electron yield (SEY) copper coatings to the long, small-diameter cold bore tubes of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. His pioneering work on a 50 cm long cathode magnetron mole and versatile discharge cleaning systems has directly enabled the suppression of electron clouds and reduced resistive heating in stainless steel vacuum chambers. Though his highly specialized papers have garnered modest citation counts (2–4 each), their impact is profound within the accelerator physics community, solving practical bottlenecks for machine upgrades. Erickson’s achievements include designing the first operational device for in-situ coating of RHIC’s 316LN stainless steel tubes, a technique now foundational for maintaining beam stability and performance in next-generation colliders.