Heavy-ion accelerator

A machine that accelerates atomic nuclei heavier than protons to high energies, enabling nuclear-reaction experiments and studies of nuclear matter.

Ion source: A device that produces charged atoms or molecules for acceleration. It supplies the heavy ions that enter the accelerator.
Relativistic heavy-ion collision: A collision between heavy nuclei traveling at speeds close to the speed of light. These collisions create hot, dense matter studied with high-energy heavy-ion machines.
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider: A collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory that brings beams of heavy ions into collision. RHIC uses gold-ion collisions to investigate the properties of quark–gluon plasma.
Ernest Lawrence: An American physicist who developed the cyclotron and received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics. His cyclotron established a compact circular approach later adapted for heavier ions.
Proton accelerator: A particle accelerator designed primarily to accelerate protons to high energies. Protons are simpler to accelerate, while heavy ions provide many interacting nucleons per collision.
Linear particle accelerator: A device that accelerates charged particles along a straight path using electromagnetic fields. Linear sections can inject or boost heavy ions before circulation or collision.
Quark–gluon plasma: A state of matter in which quarks and gluons are not confined inside individual hadrons. Heavy-ion collisions can produce this state for brief moments.
Large Hadron Collider: A circular collider at CERN that accelerates and collides protons and atomic nuclei. Its lead-ion program studies strongly interacting matter at higher collision energies.
Cyclotron: A circular particle accelerator that uses a magnetic field and repeated electric acceleration. It is an early accelerator design that enabled progressively more powerful ion machines.
Electron accelerator: A machine that accelerates electrons for experiments, radiation production, or applications. Electrons probe nuclei electromagnetically without producing the dense nuclear collisions sought here.

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