Particle accelerators are experimental techniques and associated infrastructures that use electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles, such as electrons, protons, or heavy ions, to high kinetic energies and control their trajectories for collision, beam-target, or irradiation experiments. They employ radiofrequency cavities, electrostatic fields, and magnetic optics (dipole, quadrupole, and higher-order magnets) to shape, focus, and steer beams with precise energy, emittance, and luminosity characteristics. As techniques, accelerators enable probing of fundamental interactions in high-energy physics, production of secondary particles (e.g., neutrons, mesons, synchrotron radiation), and finely controlled irradiation or imaging in materials science, nuclear physics, and medical and industrial applications.
Many advances in structural science since the 1970s were made by probing materials with synchrotron radiation: that is, high energy X-rays generated through accelerating high-energy electrons. The latest generation of such ...
General Physics
Apr 12, 2024
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The experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) require high-performance event-selection systems—known as "triggers" in particle physics—to filter the flow of data to manageable levels. The triggers pick events with distinguishing ...
General Physics
Apr 11, 2024
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Last week, at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference, the CMS collaboration presented a measurement of the effective leptonic electroweak mixing angle. The result is the most precise measurement performed at a hadron ...
General Physics
Apr 8, 2024
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Operating at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) since 2022, the FASER experiment is designed to search for extremely weakly interacting particles. Such particles are predicted by many theories beyond the Standard Model that ...
General Physics
Apr 8, 2024
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In March 2024, the CMS collaboration announced the observation of two photons creating two tau leptons in proton–proton collisions. It is the first time that this process has been seen in proton–proton collisions, which was ...
General Physics
Mar 26, 2024
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Whether in listening to music or pushing a swing in the playground, we are all familiar with resonances and how they amplify an effect—a sound or a movement, for example. However, in high-intensity circular particle accelerators, ...
General Physics
Mar 20, 2024
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In massive particle accelerators, sub-atomic particles (like electrons) are sped up to super-high speeds comparable to the speed of light towards a target surface. The collision of accelerated sub-atomic particles gives rise ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 13, 2024
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The particle accelerators that enable high-energy physics and serve many fields of science, such as materials, medical, and fusion research, are driven by superconducting magnets that are, to put it simply, quite finicky.
General Physics
Mar 11, 2024
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During the manufacturing process, many medical devices or equipment for use on humans must be sterilized according to recognized standards. This includes gowns, surgical drapes, syringes and implantable medical devices. In ...
General Physics
Mar 4, 2024
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From televisions to X-ray machines, many modern technologies are enabled by electrons that have been juiced up by a particle accelerator. Now, the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility ...
General Physics
Feb 29, 2024
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