The History of Accelerators

Accelerator Development

Larger and larger accelerators were built using Lawrence cyclotron invention. The bending magnets grew large and cumbersome. Rather than having one large magnet and a growing particle orbit spiralling out from the magnet centre, accelerators were developed with several smaller bending magnets and a fixed particle orbit. To keep the orbit fixed the magnetic field of the bending magnets had to increase with increasing energy. The magnetic field was synchronised with the increasing energy of the accelerated particles; the synchrotron was born.

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