Introduction to particle
accelerators and their applications:
overview
Gabriele Chiodini
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
Sezione di Lecce
PhD lessons in Physics for Università del Salento 2015-16 (20 hours, 4 CFD)
- Textbook: “An Introduction to Particle Accelerator” Edmund Wilson
- CAS (cern accelerator school): http://cas.web.cern.ch/cas/CAS%20Welcome/Previous%20Schools.htm
High Energy Physics (HEP)
In fixed target experiments the beam intensity is high because the target is very dense but much of the energy is lost in recoil kinetic energy.
In colliders the particles of opposite charge and momentum collide and all the energy is available for the creation of new heavy particles. The intensity is low because the target is beam.
Circular colliders ( single ring or double ring ) can accumulate more charge by multiple injections ( stacking ) and collide many times the same beams.
Application not HEP
•
Synchrotron light source and free electron lasers•
Neutron spallation sources•
Isotopes production!
•
Atomic mass spectroscopy•
X-ray radiography•
Hadron therapy against cancer•
Ions implantation•
Surface metallurgy•
Food and material sterilisation•
Driver for inertial nuclear fusion•
Fission reactor assisted by accelerators (ADS)Energy and intensity frontier
The energy increases a factor 10 every 10 years
The beam intensity is measured in current (I) and for the same power ( W ) machines of lower energy (E) have higher currents
→ W ( Watts ) = E ( volts ) xI ( Ampere )
LHC: the most
powerful accelerator
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva is located 200 meters underground, has a circumference of 27 km, accelerates two beams of protons in opposite directions in two separate rings at energies up to 7000 GeV and has four points of interaction with four experiments.
