Synchrotron

A circular particle accelerator that raises particle energy while synchronizing its magnetic field and accelerating electric field to keep particles on a stable orbit.

Betatron: A circular accelerator that increases particle energy through a changing magnetic flux. Its changing flux accelerates particles, while a synchrotron uses a radio-frequency electric field.
Particle accelerator: A device that increases the energy of charged particles and controls their motion. A synchrotron is one member of this broad family of machines.
Large Hadron Collider: A superconducting proton-proton collider at CERN near Geneva. It is a prominent synchrotron built to accelerate and collide protons at high energies.
Vladimir Veksler: A Soviet physicist who independently formulated the principle of phase stability in 1944. His work supplied a key principle for maintaining acceleration as particle energy increases.
Antiproton: The antiparticle of the proton, with equal mass and opposite electric charge. Its discovery at the Bevatron demonstrated the scientific reach of high-energy synchrotrons.
Radio-frequency cavity: A resonant structure that transfers energy to charged particles with oscillating electric fields. Its timed voltage boosts each particle bunch as it passes through the ring.
Cyclotron: A circular accelerator that uses a fixed magnetic field and alternating electric field to accelerate particles. Unlike a synchrotron, its magnetic field does not track rising particle momentum.
CERN Proton Synchrotron: A CERN proton accelerator commissioned in 1959 that serves as part of the laboratory’s accelerator complex. It illustrates how a synchrotron can inject beams into larger accelerator systems.
Edwin McMillan: An American physicist who independently developed phase stability and built early synchrotrons. His 1945 analysis helped establish the practical design of synchrotrons.
Particle physics: The branch of physics that studies fundamental particles and their interactions. Synchrotrons provide the high-energy beams used in many particle-physics experiments.

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