Applications

  • medicine, industry, cold pasteurization, security etc
  • Energy production, accelerator driven system

History

  • Electrostatic accelerators
    • Like a CRT!
    • van de graaff
    • LINACs
      • Able to use AC current to accelerate particles. Use drift tubes to prevent them slowing down
  • Cyclotron
    • higher energies than linac
  • Synchrotron
    • Constant radius
    • RF cavities accelerate the beam
    • Dipole magnets bend the beam
    • Quadrupole magnets focus the beam
    • This forms a collider, two beams are maintained. When the beams are collided the energy is double.

Accelerators and perfomance indicators

  • Energy, Beam intensity, and Beam emittance (size)
  • Colliders - high energy physics
    • we are interested in luminosity, or event production rate
  • Spallation sources - target experiments. SNS, ORNL
    • Average beam power
    • Continuous beam
  • Synchrotron radiation sources - spectroscopy ESRF
    • Brightness / photon density

The CERN accelerator complex

  • mostly synchrotrons lol

Synchrotrons

  • We need to control the beam to
    • Enable long storage times
    • Preserve beam quality
  • These can be achieved by focusing
    • Phase RF Cavities
      • AC current causes particles to bunch
    • Weak
      • While the effect of gravity is negligible compared to the magnets, the long storage times of 10-20hs means it adds up
    • Strong