Office Enterprise 2007 Accelerator Form and Functi
 

Visit > SLAC Home | SLAC Today | For Staff | For Users Photon Science | Particle Physics and Astrophysics | Operations Accelerator Form and Function What are accelerators used for? Quite simply,Office 2010 Professional, accelerators give high energy to subatomic particles,Office 2010 Activation, 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,Office Enterprise 2007, 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. How many kinds of accelerators are there? Particle accelerators come in two basic designs,Office 2007 Key, linear (linac) and circular (synchrotron). The accelerator at SLAC is a linac. The longer a linac is,Office 2010 Professional Plus, the higher the energy of the particles it can produce. A synchrotron achieves high energy by circulating particles many times before they hit their targets. Linacs are used in medicine as well as in physics research. How does the SLAC linac work? Verify it out! How do they work? Your TV set or computer monitor contains the components of an accelerator. As you might suspect, operating an accelerator as large as the linac at SLAC is a challenging task. To learn more about the SLAC linear accelerator structural components and experimental facilities, select a link below. Accelerator Components Beam Switch Yard Damping Rings Electron Gun Klystrons Linac Positron Production