Longitudinal Beam Dynamics

Abstract

Accelerator physics is primarily the study of the interaction of charged particles with electromagnetic fields. In previous chapters we have concentrated the discussion on the interaction of transverse electrical and magnetic fields with charged particles and have derived appropriate formalisms to apply this interaction to the design of beam transport systems. The characteristics of these transverse fields is that they allow to guide charged particles along a prescribed path but do not contribute directly to the energy of the particles through acceleration. For particle acceleration we must generate fields with nonvanishing force components in the direction of the desired acceleration. Such fields are called longitudinal fields or accelerating fields. In a very general way we describe in this section the interaction of longitudinal electric fields with charged particles to derive the process of particle acceleration, its scaling laws, and its stability limits.