Question

----Modern Physics question: Please be thorough with your explanation.

Using the Internet, find the location of a particle accelerator. In several paragraphs describe its size, what particles are being accelerated, how they are being accelerated, what their target is, how the particles are detected and what sub-atomic particles have been discovered at the site. Be sure to cite your sources.

Answer 1

Particle accelerator is a machine that uses EM (electro-magnetic) fields to accelerate charged particles to very high speeds. Then, these are used for various research purposes.

Working: Particle accelerators use electric fields to increase the speed of the charged particles which then are focussed in a particular path by magnetic fields. The whole arrangement is set-up in vacuum to avoid any air molecules collisions. Generally the particles which are accelerated are electrons, protons. But sometimes, heavier particles like whole atom of gold and uranium are also used.

Electric fields are setup at a certain frequency which accelerate (or speed up) the charged particles repeatedly and magnetic field is used to focus their beam.

Location and Size: There are around more than 30,000 particle accelerators around the world. These are of basically two types: linear accelerators and circular accelerators. Linear accelerators are generally used for fixed target experiments while circular accelerators are generally used for colliding beams, but they are also used for fixed targets. The large Hadron collider is the world's largest particle accelerator at CERN. It is based in northwest suburb of Geneva. It consists of a 27 km ring of superconducting magnets with numerous accelerating apparatus's to boost the speed of the particles. Thousands of magnets of different sizes are used to direct the beam.

Targets: There is generally a fixed target such as phosphor coating on screen. Target is fitted to the end of the accelerator.

Particles detected: Over last 40-50 years, accelerators have produced photons, the basic entity (sub-atomic particle) of any electromagnetic radiations. These accelerators are the tools for the discovery for nuclear and particle physics and for x-rays, neurons. which comes under the neutral sub-atomic particle.