A list of
particle accelerator
A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Small accelerators are used for fundamental ...
s used for
particle physics
Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...
experiments. Some early particle accelerators that more properly did
nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter.
Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies th ...
, but existed prior to the separation of particle physics from that field, are also included. Although a modern accelerator complex usually has several stages of accelerators, only accelerators whose output has been used directly for experiments are listed.
Early accelerators
These all used single beams with fixed targets. They tended to have very briefly run, inexpensive, and unnamed experiments.
Cyclotrons
/sup> The magnetic pole pieces and return yoke from the 60-inch cyclotron were later moved to UC Davis and incorporated into a 76-inch isochronous cyclotron which is still in use today
Other early accelerator types
Synchrotrons
Fixed-target accelerators
More modern accelerators that were also run in fixed target mode; often, they will also have been run as collider
A collider is a type of particle accelerator that brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. Compared to other particle accelerators in which the moving particles collide with a stationary matter target, collid ...
s, or accelerated particles for use in subsequently built colliders.
High intensity hadron accelerators (Meson and neutron sources)
Electron and low intensity hadron accelerators
Colliders
Electron–positron colliders
Hadron colliders
Electron-proton colliders
Light sources
Hypothetical accelerators
Besides the real accelerators listed above, there are hypothetical accelerators often used
as hypothetical examples or optimistic projects by particle physicists.
* Eloisatron (Eurasiatic Long Intersecting Storage Accelerator) was a project of INFN headed by Antonio Zichichi at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice
Erice (; ) is a (municipality) contiguous with the provincial capital Trapani, in western Sicily. Its historic core occupies the site of the ancient city of Eryx, one of the most significant archaeological and religious centres in pre-Roman w ...
, Sicily
Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...
. The center-of-mass energy was planned to be 200 TeV, and the size was planned to span parts of Europe
Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...
and Asia
Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...
.
* Fermitron was an accelerator sketched by Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian and naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project ...
on a notepad in the 1940s proposing an accelerator in stable orbit around the Earth.
* The undulator radiation collider is a design for an accelerator with a center-of-mass energy around the GUT scale The grand unification energy \Lambda_, or the GUT scale, is the energy level above which, it is believed, the electromagnetic force, weak force, and strong force become equal in strength and unify to one force governed by a simple Lie group. The ...
. It would be light-weeks across and require the construction of a Dyson swarm
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy re ...
around the Sun
The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...
.
* Planckatron is an accelerator with a center-of-mass energy of the order of the Planck scale
In particle physics and physical cosmology, Planck units are a system of units of measurement defined exclusively in terms of four universal physical constants: '' c'', '' G'', '' ħ'', and ''k''B (described further below). Expressing one of ...
. It is estimated that the radius of the Planckatron would have to be roughly the radius of the Milky Way. It would require so much energy to run that it could only be built by at least a Kardashev Type II civilization.
See also
* List of accelerator mass spectrometry facilities
* List of synchrotron radiation facilities
References
External links
*Judy Goldhaber. October 9, 1992
Bevalac Had 40-Year Record of Historic Discoveries
High-energy collider parameters
from th
Particle Data Group
Lawrence and his laboratory
– a history of the early years of accelerator physics at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a federally funded research and development center in the hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established in 1931 by the University of California (UC), the laboratory is spo ...
A brief history and review of accelerators (11 pgs, PDF file)
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Accelerators and detectors named Mark at SLAC
* Lawson, J. D. (1997),
Early British Synchrotrons, An Informal History
, ccessed 17 May 2009
A FEW QUICK FACTS ABOUT THE TRIUMF CYCLOTRON
Accelerators in particle physics
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