Abstract
After the invention of repeated acceleration, applied in the cyclotron of Ernest Lawrence, all the experts of the period were convinced that Wideröe’s idea of the linear accelerator (Fig. 1.10) no longer had a future. All except one: Luis Alvarez, who was one of the most inventive scientists of the twentieth century. After the war he convinced himself that, at a sufficiently high energy, the cost of the circular accelerator would become prohibitive and therefore decided to use the new techniques of radiofrequency circuits to construct the first proton linear accelerator; after many highs and lows, in 1947 he succeeded to make it work.
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Notes
- 1.
Non-member states with co-operation agreements with CERN include Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Georgia, Iceland, Iran, Jordan, Korea, Lithuania, Malta, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, South Africa, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
- 2.
The same formula applies if the available energy, the mass M and the energy E are all measured in GeV, as it is done most often in this book.
- 3.
The circumference of the synchrotron, to achieve a certain total energy, is determined by the magnetic field in the bending magnets. If this is assumed to be fixed, usually at the maximum practical value, the size of the ring must increase proportionately with the total energy.
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Amaldi, U. (2015). Small Accelerators Grow. In: Particle Accelerators: From Big Bang Physics to Hadron Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08870-9_2
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