Nuclear Physics & Particle Physics
Particle accelerators

Introduction

A particle accelerator is a machine that moves charged particles to high speed, which is nearly light speed.

Large accelerators are used in particle physics as colliders to study particles or produce new ones.

Smaller particle accelerators are used in a wide variety of applications, including therapy by radiation oncology , and radioisotope production for medical diagnostics.

There are currently more than 30,000 accelerators in operation around the world.

The accelerators can also be classified depending on the geometry of the trajectories of acceleration: linear or circular.

The accelerators can also be classified into energy:

low energy: 10 to 100 MeV;
average energy: between 100 and 1000 MeV;
High energy: more than 1 GeV and beyond TeV (Tera electron volt = 1012 eV).