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particle accelerator
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schematic diagram of a linear proton resonance accelerator
How does a particle accelerator work?
schematic diagram of a Van de Graaff high-voltage electrostatic generator two-stage tandem particle accelerator plan view of a classical cyclotron acceleration chamber of a linear electron accelerator Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, California schematic diagram of a synchrotron with alternating-gradient focusing
How does the Large Hadron Collider work?
Figure 9: The tunnel of the Main Accelerator at Fermilab. The upper ring of conventional magnets comprise the fourth stage of particle acceleration. The particle beam can then be injected into the Tev
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linear accelerator
particle accelerator summary
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Impulse accelerators

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Written by
Christine Sutton
Science writer. Research Associate, Department of Nuclear Physics, University of Oxford. Author of The Particle Connection and Spaceship Neutrino.
Christine Sutton
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Primarily for use in research on thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen isotopes, several high-intensity electron accelerators have been constructed. One type resembles a string of beads in which each bead is a torus of laminated iron and the string is the vacuum tube. The iron toruses constitute the cores of pulse transformers, and the beam of electrons in effect forms the secondary windings of all of the transformers, which are connected in series. The primaries are all connected in parallel and are powered by the discharge of a large bank of capacitors. These accelerators produce electron beams with energies between 1 and 9 MeV and currents between 200 and 200,000 amperes. The pulses are very brief, lasting about 50 nanoseconds. Besides their application to thermonuclear fusion, such accelerators are utilized for flash radiography, research on collective ion acceleration, microwave production, and laser excitation.

Christine Sutton