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.
A new LHCb analysis confirms a previously observed tension with the Standard Model, but more data and improved theoretical calculations are needed to determine whether new physics is at play.
General Physics
Sep 24, 2025
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This summer, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) took a breath of fresh air. Normally filled with beams of protons, the 27-km ring was reconfigured to enable its first oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions. First results from ...
General Physics
Sep 18, 2025
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An international collaboration has developed a new diagnostic technique for measuring ultra-short particle beams at STFC's Central Laser Facility. This collaboration is led by the University of Michigan and Queen's University ...
Plasma Physics
Sep 15, 2025
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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is tough on electronics. Situated inside a 17-mile-long tunnel that runs in a circle under the border between Switzerland and France, this massive scientific instrument accelerates particles ...
General Physics
Jul 25, 2025
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Researchers from Trinity College Dublin's School of Engineering have built a powerful new machine that lets us watch precisely what happens when tiny particles—far smaller than a grain of sand—hit a surface at extremely high ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 24, 2025
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The sPHENIX particle detector, the newest experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has released its first physics results: precision ...
General Physics
Jul 18, 2025
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The ATLAS collaboration finds evidence of Higgs-boson decays to muons and improves sensitivity to Higgs-boson decays to a Z boson and a photon.
General Physics
Jul 11, 2025
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In physics, there are two great pillars of thought that don't quite fit together. The Standard Model of particle physics describes all known fundamental particles and three forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, ...
Quantum Physics
Jul 11, 2025
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An unforeseen feature in proton-proton collisions previously observed by the CMS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has now been confirmed by its sister experiment ATLAS.
General Physics
Jul 8, 2025
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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) gets a breath of fresh air as it collides beams of protons and oxygen ions for the very first time. Oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions are also on the menu of the next few days.
General Physics
Jul 1, 2025
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