Chapter 1
Accelerators, Colliders and Their
Application
E. Wilson and B. J. Holzer
1.1 Why Build Accelerators?
Accelerators are modern, high precision tools with applications in a broad spectrum
that ranges from material treatment, isotope production for nuclear physics and
medicine, probe analysis in industry and research, to the production of high energy
particle beams in physics and astronomy. At present about 35,000 accelerators exist
world-wide, the majority of them being used for industrial and medical applications.
Originally however the design of accelerators arose from the request in basic physics
research, namely to study the basic constituents of matter.
The first accelerators were inspired by the early experiments in nuclear physics.
In the early years of the twentieth century Rutherford discovered that by using
alpha particles from radioactive disintegration and detecting the pattern of particles
scattered by atoms one might deduce that the nucleus was a tiny but massive central
element in the atom. Alpha particles from disintegration can only be of energies of
10 MeV; comparable with the nuclear binding forces. Higher energies were needed
and a more reliable and steady supply to ease the tedium of counting occasional
flashes of light on the scintillation screen that was Rutherford’s detector. De Broglie
had shown that there was an inverse relationship between the momentum, and
hence the energy of a particle and the wavelength of its representation in quantum
mechanics.
λ =
h
p
E. Wilson · B. J. Holzer ()
CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), Meyrin, Genève, Switzerland
e-mail: Bernhard.Holzer@cern.ch
© The Author(s) 2020
S. Myers, H. Schopper (eds.), Particle Physics Reference Library ,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34245-6_1
1
Accelerators, Colliders and Their
Application
E. Wilson and B. J. Holzer
1.1 Why Build Accelerators?
Accelerators are modern, high precision tools with applications in a broad spectrum
that ranges from material treatment, isotope production for nuclear physics and
medicine, probe analysis in industry and research, to the production of high energy
particle beams in physics and astronomy. At present about 35,000 accelerators exist
world-wide, the majority of them being used for industrial and medical applications.
Originally however the design of accelerators arose from the request in basic physics
research, namely to study the basic constituents of matter.
The first accelerators were inspired by the early experiments in nuclear physics.
In the early years of the twentieth century Rutherford discovered that by using
alpha particles from radioactive disintegration and detecting the pattern of particles
scattered by atoms one might deduce that the nucleus was a tiny but massive central
element in the atom. Alpha particles from disintegration can only be of energies of
10 MeV; comparable with the nuclear binding forces. Higher energies were needed
and a more reliable and steady supply to ease the tedium of counting occasional
flashes of light on the scintillation screen that was Rutherford’s detector. De Broglie
had shown that there was an inverse relationship between the momentum, and
hence the energy of a particle and the wavelength of its representation in quantum
mechanics.
λ =
h
p
E. Wilson · B. J. Holzer ()
CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), Meyrin, Genève, Switzerland
e-mail: Bernhard.Holzer@cern.ch
© The Author(s) 2020
S. Myers, H. Schopper (eds.), Particle Physics Reference Library ,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34245-6_1
1