Abstract
For discoveries in particle physics, ever-larger particle accelerators with ever-higher energies play a decisive role. In circular accelerators such as the LHC, particles are bent by strong magnetic fields and repeatedly pass through an acceleration section with high electric fields. In the process, the particles are stored for hours in a vacuum tube and are brought to the collision at distinct points.
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Notes
- 1.
In order to calculate the speed, we make use of the fact that the obtained energy \(E = q \times U\) corresponds to the kinetic energy \(E_{{{\text{kin}}}} = \tfrac{1}{2}m_{p} v^{2}\). After a short transformation we finally obtain for the velocity v eventually: \(v = \sqrt {2{\mkern 1mu} U\tfrac{q}{{m_{p} }}}\) with the mass of the proton \(m_{p}\) as \(1{.}672 \times 10^{-27}\) kg.
- 2.
At an energy of 6.5 TeV in the LHC, the protons fly at 99.999999% of the speed of light, which is only 3 m/s or 11 km/h, the speed of a jogger, slower than light.
- 3.
More about this in the essential “Exploring the Large Hadron Collider—the Discovery of the Higgs Boson”.
- 4.
The Bevatron received its name as an abbreviation of B illions of eV Synchro tron for its energy in the GeV range (billion eV).
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Hauschild, M. (2021). Particle Accelerator—How Does that Work?. In: Exploring the Large Hadron Collider - CERN and the Accelerators. essentials(). Springer, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32726-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32726-2_5
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