PARTICLE ACCELERATORS

Linear Accelerators (LINAC)

In LINAC, charged particles are accelerated by passing through a series of metal tubes called drift tubes that are
located in vacuum and connected successively to alternate terminals of a high frequency AC supply.

The alternating current is timed with a frequency such that the source particle is always attracted to the next
electrode and repelled from the previous one.

The tubes are of increasing length so that the frequency at which the charge changes can be constant despite
the increased velocity of the particle as it makes its way down the accelerator.

Each time a particle leaves a tube it is accelerated by the electric field in the gap between the tubes. Particles
moves with constant speed in a straight line inside the tube as it is equally attracted in all directions(Resultant
field inside a tube is zero). In this way with a long enough accelerator particles can approach the speed of light.

The electrostatic force acting on particles in each gap is given by

F = qE , Where q is the charge of the particle and E is electric field strength in each gap

Hence the acceleration of a particle in each gap can be found using,

F = ma
Kinetic energy gained by the particles in each gap,
½ mv2 = qV Where V is the potential difference in each gap.

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Advantages
• Linacs of appropriate design are capable of accelerating heavy ions to energies exceeding those
available in ring-type(circular) accelerators, which are limited by the strength of the magnetic fields
required to maintain the ions on a curved path.
• Linacs are also capable of producing a nearly continuous stream of particles, whereas a
cyclotron/synchrotron will only periodically raise the particles to sufficient energy.

Disadvantages
• The device length limits the locations where one may be placed.
• A great number of driver devices and their associated power supplies are required, increasing the
construction and maintenance expense.
• If the walls of the accelerating cavities are made of normally conducting material and the accelerating
fields are large, the wall resistivity converts electric energy into heat quickly.

Cyclotron

A cyclotron consists of two D-shaped regions known as dees. In each dee there is a magnetic field applied. In
the gap separating the dees there is a uniform electric field pointing from one dee to the other. When a charge is

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released from rest in the gap it is accelerated by the electric field and carried into one of the dees. The magnetic
field in the dee causes the charge to follow a half-circle that carries it back to the gap.
While the charge is in the dee the electric field in the gap is reversed, so the charge is once again accelerated
across the gap. The cycle continues with the magnetic field in the dees continually bringing the charge back to
the gap. Every time the charge crosses the gap it picks up speed. This causes the half-circles in the dees to
increase in radius, and eventually the charge emerges from the cyclotron at high speed.

Force on a charged particle in a magnetic field

We have seen how the force on a charged particles is given by:

F = Bqv sin θ
where
B - magnetic field strength ,
F - force , q - charge,
v - velocity ,
θ - angle with the magnetic field (usually 90o, so sin θ = 1).
The direction of the force is given by Fleming's Left Hand Rule. Since the force is always at 90o to the direction
of the velocity, the path is circular. Whether the circular path is clockwise or anticlockwise depends on:
• The direction of the field;
• The charge of the particles.
We can produce an expression to give us the radius of the track:

Bqv = mv2/r

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 Bq = mv/r
So we can write:
v = Bqr
m

This shows that r α v .

The equation for momentum is:
p = Bqr
The greater the momentum, the greater the radius of the path. Alternatively a bigger magnetic field is needed to
keep it on a track of the same radius.

Cyclotron frequency
The time taken by the particle to complete one circle is given by

or
frequency,

This shows that for a particle of constant mass, the frequency does not depend upon the radius of the
particle's orbit or its velocity.
As the beam spirals out, its frequency does not decrease, and it must continue to accelerate, as it is travelling
more distance in the same time.
As particles approach the speed of light, they acquire additional mass, requiring modifications to the frequency,
or the magnetic field during the acceleration.
Advantages
• Cyclotrons require less space to install compared to LINAC
• Cyclotrons have a single electrical driver, which saves both money and power.
• The compactness of the device reduces other costs, such as its foundations, radiation shielding, and the
enclosing building.
Disadvantages
• As speeds get larger, the mass of the particles increases, spoiling the simple constant frequency
relationship.
• Maximum energy produced is less than that in LINAC.

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Synchrotron
A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator in which the magnetic field (to turn the
particles so they circulate) and the electric field (to accelerate the particles) are carefully synchronised with
the travelling particle beam so that their track can be held constant.

Colliding beams and fixed target accelerators

There are several different ways to design accelerators, each with its benefits and drawbacks.
Accelerators can be arranged to provide collisions of two types:
• Fixed target: Shoot a particle at a fixed target.
In a fixed-target experiment, a charged particle such as an electron or a proton is accelerated by an electric field
and collides with a target, which can be a solid, liquid, or gas. A detector determines the charge, momentum,
mass, etc. of the resulting particles. In this method the probability of collisions is very high.
• Colliding beams: Two beams of particles are made to cross each other.
In a colliding-beam experiment two beams of high-energy particles are made to cross each other. The
advantage of this arrangement is that both beams have significant kinetic energy (energy of speed), so a
collision between them is more likely to produce a higher mass particle than would a fixed-target collision at the
same energy. Since we are dealing with particles with a lot of momentum, these particles have short
wavelengths and make excellent probes (diffracts through other particles).

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 PARTICLE DETECTORS
The Cloud Chamber

The cloud chamber, also known as the Wilson chamber, is used for detecting particles of ionizing radiation. In its
most basic form, a cloud chamber is a sealed environment containing a supercooled, supersaturated water or
alcohol vapour formed when a piston is pulled down, causing the gas in the chamber to expand and cool below
the point of condensation.
When a charged particle from the source interacts with the mixture, it ionizes it. The resulting ion act as
condensation nuclei, around which a mist will form (because the mixture is supersaturaed). The high energies of
particles mean that a trail is left, due to many collisions of the particle with air molecules
Ions are produced along the path of the charged particle. These tracks have distinctive shapes (for example, an
alpha particle's track is broad and straight, while an electron's is thinner and shows more evidence of deflection
by collisions).
If a uniform magnetic field is applied across the cloud chamber, positively and negatively charged particles will
curve in opposite directions, according to the Fleming’s left hand rule.
Lighter particles will execute a circle of smaller radius.
The Bubble Chamber

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A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) used to
detect electrically charged particles moving through it.
Bubble chambers work on the same principle as cloud chambers, the difference being they are based on
supersaturated liquid rather than superheated vapour.
They are made by filling a large cylinder with a liquid heated to just below its boiling point. As particles enter the
chamber, a piston suddenly decreases its pressure, and the liquid enters into a superheated, metastable phase.
Charged particles create ionisation tracks, around which the liquid vaporises, forming microscopic bubbles, with
density proportional to the rate of energy loss of the particle.
Bubbles grow in size as the chamber expands, until they are large enough to be seen or photographed. Several
cameras are mounted around it, allowing a three-dimensional image of an event to be captured.
The entire chamber is subject to a constant magnetic field, which causes charged particles to travel in helical
paths whose radius is determined by their velocities. If the magnitude of the charge of particles are known, their
radius of curvature must be proportional to their momentum. Thus, by measuring their radius of curvature, their
momentum can be determined.

Measurements in Particle Physics

Joules and kilograms in this context are rather clumsy to work with. So we use
electron-volts (eV). They are a unit of energy, not voltage.
energy (J) = charge (C) × voltage (V)

The electron-volt is the energy gained by unit charge accelerated through a potential difference of 1 volt.
1 eV = 1.6 × 10-19 J

Many accelerators can accelerate particles to energies of giga electron-volts (GeV) (109 eV) or even tera-
electron-volt (TeV) (1012 eV).

The units in particle physics are often expressed in units that are based on the rest mass of the particle. If we
were able to convert all an electron's mass into energy according to E = mc2, we would get:
E0 = 9.11 × 10-31 kg × (3.0 × 108 m s-1)2 = 8.20 × 10-14 J = 5.12 × 105 eV
This is 0.512 MeV. Since E = mc2,
m = E/c2
So we can say that the rest mass of the particle is 0.512 MeV/c2. Heavier particles has rest masses of
GeV/c2. These strange looking units allow particle
(1 MeV/c2 = 1.79 x 10-30 kg)

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Atomic Mass Unit (u)
The unified atomic mass unit (symbol: u) is a unit that is used for indicating mass on an atomic or molecular
scale.
It is defined as one twelfth of the rest mass of a neutral atom of carbon-12.
1u = 1.66×10−27 kg

Rutherford’s Alpha particle Scattering Experiment

In the early part of the last century, the accepted model of the atom was proposed by J J Thompson in his plum
pudding model. This consisted of a matrix of protons in which were embedded electrons.
Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937) used alpha particles to study the nature of atomic structure with the following
apparatus:

Rutherford was using alpha particles (helium nuclei) as nuclear bullets to smash up the atoms; he wanted to see
atoms bursting like watermelons. But…
His observations are best illustrated with this diagram

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Instead of bits of atom, Rutherford found that a small proportion of the alpha particles were deflected, while an
even smaller proportion bounced right back. He made the following conclusions from these observations.

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Standard Model of Particle Physics

The Standard Model of Particle Physics identifies 12 fundamental particles from which all matter is made.
There are two main groups:
• Quarks (pronounced "quork" as in "pork"), which make up the nucleons;
• Leptons (from the Greek "light-weight"), of which the most common is the electron.
QUARKS
The direct evidence for the existence of quarks inside the proton is provided by deep inelastic scattering.
The idea is to accelerate electrons to very high energies, then allow them to interact with a stationary proton, and
investigate what happens.

At high energies, the wavelengths associated with the electrons are much smaller than the size of a
proton. Hence the electrons can probe distances that are small compared with the proton - that is, DEEP within
the proton. However, the high energies tend to disrupt the proton, so that it produces several new
particles. This means the scattering is INELASTIC because the target has been changed in the process.
Quarks (pronounced “quork”) are the fundamental particles from which hadrons are made. They cannot exist on
their own. In baryons they are found as triplets. In mesons, they are always in a quark-antiquark pair.

There are three main quarks, up, down, and strange. The names have no real significance beyond the
imagination of the physicist that dubbed them such. They have corresponding antiquarks. There are three

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others with even odder names, top (sometimes called "truth"), bottom ("beauty"[!]), and charm, which we won’t
worry about here.
1st Generation 2nd Generation 3rd Generation Charge
Up u Charm c Top t +2/3 e
Down d Strange s Bottom b -1/3 e

Quarks have the following properties

• Charge, expressed as the fraction of the electronic charge. 1/3 e = 5.33 X 10-20 C
• Baryon number
• Strangeness number, when there are strange quarks.
Each antiquark has equal and opposite values of charge, baryon number and strangeness.
• Baryons are made of three quarks; antibaryons of three antiquarks.
• Mesons are made up of one quark and one antiquark.

Classification of Particles
1. Leptons
Leptons (Greek – “light thing” or “small coins”) are the smallest of the fundamental particles. They have the
following properties
• fundamental particles without structure
• charge and lepton number are conserved in all allowed lepton interactions.

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Each particle has an antiparticle; for the electron, it is the positron, the muon the antimuon, and the tau, the
antitau.
2. Hadrons
There are a very large number of particles that are classified as hadrons, which are subdivided into two further
classifications, the mesons, and the baryons.
• They are not fundamental particles and have a structure.
• They have an associated value of charge, Q,and baryon number B.
• Hadrons with zero baryon number are called mesons; those with baryon number of 1 are called baryons.

i. Mesons
They are made up of two quarks. (one quark and an antiquark).

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Particle Symbol Quark Charge(e
name content )
Kaon -1

Kaon +1

Kaon 0

phi 0

pi -1

pi +1

pi 0
,

rho 0
,

ii. Baryons
They are made up of three quarks or three antiquarks
They have charge and baryon number, which must be conserved in interactions

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Particle Quark charge
Symbol
name content (e)
p
proton uud +1

n
neutron udd 0

Lambda Λ0 uds 0
Sigma Σ+ uus +1
Sigma Σ0 uds 0
Sigma Σ− dds −1
Xi Ξ0 uss 0
Xi Ξ− dss −1
Δ++
Delta uuu +2

Δ+
Delta uud +1

Δ0
Delta udd 0

Δ−
Delta ddd −1

Omega Ω− sss −1

MATTER AND ANTIMATTER

We live in a Universe composed of matter particles (e.g. the neutron, proton and electron etc.) However,
antimatter particles are routinely created in particle accelerators.

All particles have antimatter counterparts. Anti-particles resemble their corresponding particles in every way
except for the sign of their charge. When an anti-particle meets its corresponding particle the two annihilate each
other converting their mass to pure energy.

Pair production and annihilation

When a particle and its corresponding antiparticle meet they annihilate one another. These annihilations do not
occur in a purely random way however; they must obey 3 rules: the conservation of charge, the conservation
of momentum and the conservation of energy.

consider the annihilation of an electron e- and its antiparticle the positron e+.

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The combined mass is converted into pure energy in the form of photons. (2 gamma-ray photons are
necessary to conserve momentum) and charge. Since the charges cancel at the beginning before the collision
there is no net charge at the end either.

The reverse process is called pair production. Of course the possibility of two photons of the right energy
meeting to produce an electron/positron pair is negligible. However, a single gamma-ray photon can
spontaneously produce such a pair as it passes close to a nucleus, which recoils thus conserving energy and
momentum.

The only requirement is that the gamma-ray photon carries an energy equivalent to the combined rest masses of
the electron and positron. If the incident photon has more energy than this then the excess appears as kinetic
energy of the electron/positron pair.

CONSERVATION LAWS
Particles can only interact if the following conditions are met:
• Total charge is conserved.
• Total momentum is conserved.
• Total mass-energy is conserved.
• baryon number is conserved.
• lepton number is conserved.
• Strangeness is conserved.

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For example, consider this interaction:
p + π- → n + π0
Charge:
+1 + -1 = 0 + 0
Charge is conserved.
Baryon number (if it's a baryon, its baryon number is 1):
+1 + 0 = 1 + 0
Baryon number is conserved.
The lepton number is 0 for all the particles, since none of them are leptons. Since all these are conserved, the
interaction will go ahead.

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