Acceleration technologies for charged particles: an introduction

Abstract

Particle accelerators have many important uses in scientific experiments, in industry and in medicine. This paper reviews the variety of technologies which are used to accelerate charged particles to high energies. It aims to show how the capabilities and limitations of these technologies are related to underlying physical principles. The paper emphasises the way in which different technologies are used together to convey energy from the electrical supply to the accelerated particles.

Keywords:

• particle accelerator
• electrostatic accelerator
• cyclotron
• betatron
• induction accelerator
• synchrotron
• radio-frequency accelerator
• power converter
• high power radio-frequency sources
• tetrode
• inductive output tube (IOT)
• klystron
• magnetron