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11.5 Thoron particle beam cannons

Thoron beams, also known as thasers, are somewhat of a throwback to particle-beam weapon technology; their primary advantage over phasers and teryon beams is that they are highly disruptive to known shield technologies, and that they also prevent accurate targeting by the threat vessel once the fighting has begun; thoron particles are disruptive to sensors also. Thoron particles themselves are actually radon-222 atoms, ionized, so technically this could be classified as heavy-ion beam technology.

There are five stages to the thoron beam process:

Stage 1- Collection This is actually a process that occurs all the time; thoron particles are gathered from the refined thorium pile that is placed at the beginning of the linac. An initial storage amount is built up, and then continually replenished; enough shots for around 20 beams to start with, maximum of 100. There are only so many atoms one can store.

Stage 2- Ionization and cyclotronic acceleration Prior to injection into the synchrocyclotron, a mesoenergy electron beam ionizes the thoron atoms, enabling them to be accelerated. Then they are drawn into the SCT, to be bumped up to about 2 MeV via two 'Dee's; magnets shaped like a D that guide the beam, and radio frequency cavities to give an additional boost in power. Then the beam becomes too powerful to be held by the size of the SCT(around 5 meters), and they're passed to the next stage.

Stage 3- Linac-based acceleration Standard acceleration techniques; with the superconducting materials available to the 25th century, plus smaller acceleration 'gaps'. High-temp superconducting magnets plus microwave-level radio frequency gaps provide a higher kick for the buck. The energy by the end of this is around 2 GeV, higher than most phaser beams.

Stage 4- Lens Focusing and Graviton Field generation Next step is basically magnetic lens shaping, to ensure a coherent beam for the final stage. Borrowed deflector dish technology also enables precise gravimetric shaping of the beam to bypass limitations on magnetic technology.

Stage 5- Firing The easiest step. The TAC punk watches the beam hit the target.

-Activation-

Much of this is borrowed from phaser activation technology, since the massive power requirements are similar. Upon receiving the command to fire, the EPS submaster flow regulator manages the energetic plasma powering the cannon through a series of physical irises and magnetic switching gates. Iris response is 0.01 seconds and is used for gross adjustments in plasma distribution; magnetic gate response is .0003 seconds and is employed for rapid fine-tuning of plasma routing within small sections of the magnetic field generator. Normal control of all irises and gates is affected through the autonomic side of the thoron function command processor, located up in Thaser Control on deck 3 of the bridge module. The regulator is manufactured from combined-crystal sonodanite, solenogyn and radium tritanide.

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