Smashing Atoms In the 1930s, scientists investigated cosmic rays.

When these highly energetic particles (protons) from outer space hit atoms of lead (i.e. nuclei of the atoms), many smaller particles were sprayed out. These particles were not protons or neutrons, but were much smaller. Therefore, scientists concluded that the nucleus must be made of smaller, more elementary particles. The search began for these particles. At that time, the only way to collide highly energetic particles with atoms was to go to a mountaintop where cosmic rays were more common, and conduct the experiments there. However, physicists soon built devices called particle accelerators, or atom smashers. In these devices, you accelerate particles to high speeds -- high kinetic energies -- and collide them with target atoms. The resulting pieces from the collision, as well as emitted radiation, are detected and analyzed. The information tells us about the particles that make up the atom and the forces that hold the atom together. A particle accelerator experiment has been described as determining the structure of a television by looking at the pieces after it has been dropped from the Empire State Building. Electron Gun At the western end of the two mile tunnel that houses the beam line is the electron gun, which produces the electrons to be accelerated. Any filament that is heated by an electrical current flowing through it releases a few electrons into the space around it. When a strong electric field is applied, more electrons are pulled out of the hot filament. The electric field accelerates the electrons towards the beginning of the accelerator structure. This is the way your TV or computer monitor produces it's electron beams. What are accelerators used for? Quite simply, accelerators give high energy to subatomic particles, which then collide with targets. Out of this interaction come many other subatomic particles that pass into detectors. From the information gathered in the detectors, physicists can determine properties of the particles and their interactions. The higher the energy of the accelerated particles, the more closely we can probe the structure of matter. For that reason a major goal of researchers is to produce higher and higher particle energies.

Physicists use particle accelerators to study the nature of matter and energy. The massive machines accelerate charged particles (ions) through an electric field in a hollow, evacuated tube, eventually colliding each ion with a stationary target or another moving particle. Scientists analyze the results of the collisions, attempting to probe the interactions governing the subatomic world. (The collision point is usually located in a bubble chamber, a device that records the tracks of ionizing particles as rows of tiny bubbles in a liquid-filled chamber.) The paths of the accelerating particles may be straight, spiral, or circular. Both the cyclotron(spiral path) and the synchrotron (circular path) use an increasingly strong magnetic field to control the paths of particles. Although smashing particles may initially appear to be an odd technique of studying them, particle accelerators have enabled scientists to learn more about the subatomic world than

any other device. Particle Accelerators are devices used to accelerate charged elementary particles or ions to high energies. Particle accelerators today are some of the largest and most expensive instruments used by physicists. They all have the same three basic parts: y (a) a source of elementary particles or ions y (b) a tube pumped to a partial vacuum in which the particles can travel freely y (c) some means of speeding up the particles. Charged particles can be accelerated by an electrostatic field. For example, by placing electrodes with a large potential difference at each end of an evacuated tube, British scientists John D. Cockcroft and Ernest Walton were able to accelerate protons to 250,000 eV .Another electrostatic accelerator is the Van de Graaff accelerator, which was developed in the early1930s by the American physicist Robert Jemison Van de Graaff. This accelerator uses the same principles as the Van de Graaff Generator. The Van de Graaff accelerator builds up a potential between two electrodes by transporting charges on a moving belt.Van de Graaff accelerators can accelerate particles to energies as high as 15 MeV (15 million electron volts). Fermions: Matter and Anti-matter Fermions distinguish between matter (leptons and quarks) and anti-matter. Leptons Leptons are extremely small particles (less than 10-15 m radius) that have no known size or internal structure. They have tiny masses, travel very fast and are best described by wave functions. The best known examples of leptons are the electron and the neutrino. The leptons have been classified into: y electron-electron neutrino y muon-muon neutrino y tau-tau neutrino Quarks Quarks are extremely small particles (less than 10-15 m radius) that participate in the strong nuclear force. Isolated (single) quarks have never been found, probably because they combine with each other so quickly. Quarks also have fractional electric charges. They are classified as follows: y down (d) - charge = -1/3 y up (u) - charge = +2/3 y strange (s) - charge = -1/3 y charm (c) - charge = +2/3 y bottom (b) - charge = -1/3 y top (t) - charge = +2/3 (most massive, discovered in 1995) As of now, quarks are thought to be the most fundamental particles.

Antimatter Not much is known about antimatter. The first anti-matter particle discovered was the positron, which has a mass similar to an electron but with a positive charge. This area of particle physics is currently under investigation. A quark is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. Due to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never directly observed or found in isolation; they can only be found within hadrons. For this reason, much of what is known about quarks has been drawn from observations of the hadrons themselves. There are six types of quarks, known as flavors: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top.[4] Up and down quarks have the lowest masses of all quarks. The heavier quarks rapidly change into up and down quarks through a process of particle decay: the transformation from a higher mass state to a lower mass state. Because of this, up and down quarks are generally stable and the most common in the universe, whereas strange, charm, top, and bottom quarks can only be produced in high energy collisions (such as those involving cosmic rays and in particle accelerators). Quarks have various intrinsic properties, including electric charge, color charge, spin, and mass. Quarks are the only elementary particles in the Standard Model of particle physics to experience all four fundamental interactions, also known as fundamental forces (electromagnetism, gravitation, strong interaction, and weak interaction), as well as the only known particles whose electric charges are not integer multiples of the elementary charge. For every quark flavor there is a corresponding type of antiparticle, known as antiquark, that differs from the quark only in that some of its properties have equal magnitude but opposite sign. The quark model was independently proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig in 1964. Quarks were introduced as parts of an ordering scheme for hadrons, and there was little evidence for their physical existence until deep inelastic scattering experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1968.All six flavors of quark have since been observed in accelerator experiments; the top quark, first observed at Fermilab in 1995, was the last to be discovered.

Subatomic Particles With all of this technology, what have we learned about the structure of matter? When physicists first began using accelerators in the 1950s and1960s, they discovered hundreds of particles smaller than the three well-known subatomic particles -- protons, neutrons and electrons. As bigger accelerators were built, ones that could provide higher energy beams, more particles were found. Most of these particles exist for only fractions (less than a billionth) of a second, and some particles combine to form more stable composite particles. Some particles are involved in the forces that hold the nucleus of the atom together, and some are not. In examining this complicated picture, a standard model of the atom has emerged. According to this model, matter can be divided into the following building blocks: y Fermions - subatomic particles that make known matter and antimatter matter leptons elementary particles that do not participate in holding the nucleus together (examples -

electron, neutrino) quarks - elementary particles that do participate in holding the nucleus together anti-matter - counter-particles of quarks and leptons (anti-quarks, anti-leptons) y Hadrons - composite particles (examples - proton, neutron) y Bosons - particles that carry forces (four known types) CERN is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the FrancoSwiss border . The term CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs just under 2400 fulltime employees/workers, as well as some 7931 scientists and engineers representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities. CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research. Numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them. It is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web. The main site at Meyrin also has a large computer centre containing very powerful dataprocessing facilities primarily for experimental data analysis and, because of the need to make them available to researchers elsewhere, has historically been a major wide area networking hub. Early in the 20th century, we discovered the structure of the atom. We found that the atom was made of smaller pieces called subatomic particles -- most notably the proton, neutron, and electron. However, experiments conducted in the second half of the 20th century with "atom smashers," or particle accelerators, revealed that the subatomic structure of the atom was much more complex. Particle accelerators can take a particle, such as an electron, speed it up to near the speed of light, collide it with an atom and thereby discover its internal parts.

Future Directions in Particle Physics Several questions still remain unresolved with respect to the standard model: y Why are there three pairs of quarks when it appears that only one pair is needed to make matter? y What gives particles (also atoms and matter) mass? y Why is the top quark (which is 35 times bigger than the bottom quark) so massive compared to the others?

Getting the Particles That Will Be Accelerated As long as a particle has charge, (protons, electrons, positrons, ions, and the nuclei of heavy atoms such as gold) it can be accelerated in a particle accelerator. There are many ways to get and isolate these particles. If you take any filament that is heated by an electrical current flowing through it releases a few electrons into the space around it. When a strong electric field is applied, more electrons are pulled out of the hot filament. The electric field accelerates the electrons toward the beginning of the accelerator's structure.

electron gun at SLAC Another way of getting electrons is by having a polarized laser light knock electrons off the surface of a semiconductor and again an electric field accelerates them towards the accelerator structure. If you want positrons you can fire an electron beam at tungsten. In the collision, electron-positron pairs are made. The positrons can be accelerated by reversing the directions of the electric and magnetic fields within the accelerator. There are many similar ways of producing protons, ions, and such.

Accelerating the Particle

The idea behind the accelerating part of a particle accelerator is that: like charges repel and opposites attract. Two plates, each with a small hole in their centers, the first negatively charged, and the second positively charged. If you place an electron between these plates it will be accelerated towards the positive plate. Now when the electron is just about to reach the positive plate the charge on it is changed to negative the electron will feel a repulsive force. But since the electron has momentum it will pass trough the hole in the plate and now be repelled forward, thus accelerating more. Now if after this second plate there was a third positively charged plate, there would be even more of a force acting to accelerate the electron forward. Now to make this a practical particle accelerator and make sure the electron doesn't bump into anything you place these plates in a vacuum, and since charges have to flow to make the plates positive and negative, the chamber and plates are made of copper.

If you push down on the surface of the water you create waves which move water that you have not even touch. It is with this same idea that we can change the charge on the plates. By negatively charging the first plate all the electrons on the second plate are repelled, leaving behind a positively charged plate. The electrons in the copper pipe are now attracted to this positive charge and move to the third plate, causing it to be negatively charged, and the whole above process starts again. Now to get to the wave idea. If you now switch the charge on the first plate, it will ripple down and you will switch the charges on all the plates. This allows for the constant repel and attract system, described above, that accelerates the particles. The switching of the charge on the first plate and the ripple affect causes electromagnetic standing waves in the cavities. This is done by the Klystrons.

Now since the particle is getting faster the spacing between each plate gets successively larger so that the timing is right with the switching of the charge on the plates. Otherwise you would have the particle getting attracted in the wrong direction and would be slowing it down instead of accelerating it.

Focusing and Bending the Particle Since you don't want your particles crashing into the charged plates but instead want them going through the holes in the middle of the plates, you have to find a way of doing that with out interfering with their motion. Magnets are the answer. Not your typical refrigerator magnets, but high power electromagnets and super conducting magnets.

You set up four magnetic poles at the corners of a square (see figure). This creates a magnetic field that will push the particle back to the center if it strays up or down, and away from the center if it strays left or right.

Now by setting up 4 more magnetic poles following these rotated 90 degrees you focus the stray left and right particles. Now for the second set of magnets the particles that strayed left or right and got pushed away, will now get pushed back towards the center. With this set up you can focus your particles into one nice thin stream.

Now if you have a circular accelerator or need to bend the particle beams to hit a target, all you have to do is adjust the focusing magnets a bit and it will push the particles in whatever direction you want.

Links http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mvigeant/univ_270_03/Jaime/HowItWorks.html http://www.cientificosaficionados.com/libros/aceleradores1.pdf