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You may have wondered why you clicked on a desktop monitor (ok!, I know mine is a LCD), to learn about particle accelerators. Well believe it or not, the cathode ray tube in your tv and the monitor you are now looking at, is a type of particle accelerator. In common with the huge research accelerators, they share the same basic requirements: [A] A tubular Cavity to accelerate the particles [B] Magnets to bend them [C] Other Magnets to focus them [D] A Vacuum Chamber to avoid particles colliding with air molecules [E] A Case to contain all the components. There are two basic types of Particle Accelerators: Linear or Linac Accelerators, and Circular or Cyclotron Accelerators. We will look at Cyclotrons (the most poweful type) later. |
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A Simple Explanation of Linear Particle Accelerators
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| Linear accelerators are the simplest type to understand. Particles are injected at one end of the tube and are subjected an electric field. They are accelerated down the length of the tube, and come out with a higher energy. |
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There are two types of collisions utilized in the linear colliders. There are fixed target experiments where the electron in the above picture would collide with a stationary target. Another type is the linear collider. Instead of one beam of particles being accelerated, two beams of opposite charge are accelerated side by side. They then enter a magnetic field, and since they have opposite charged, they bend in opposite directions in an arc, where they then collide. |
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Since beams are smashing into each other, they collide with a greater energy then they would with just one beam. In the huge research linear accelerators (the underground one at Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) is about 3 km long) the electrons are pushed by wave generators called Klystrons. These accelerate the particles to almost the speed of light, before they strike the target at the end of the tunnel. The more power the accelerator produces, the higher is the collision energy, which produces larger particles for examination, by the 'Particle Detectors' - more of which later. |
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.I am indebteded to Jeremy Verkaik of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at The University of York, Toronto, Canada for the use of the Accelerator demonstrations.
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| What are some advantages linear
accelerators have over circular accelerators? The particles don't get dizzy. |
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