Particle Accelerators

Discuss the role of particle accelerators in the development of the standard model of matter

Atoms are composed of sub-atomic particles. In 2010 European Organization for Nuclear Research developed a particle accelerator that can generate high energy particle beams of 1.18TetraeV. Why bother? In order to discover sub-atomic particles we must be able to smash and break the atom. Since the sub-atomic particles are holding each other tightly, their binding energy is very high, it is then essential to have high energy particles to be able to smash the atoms. There are three different types of accelerators: linear, cyclotrons and synchrotrons.

The linear particle accelerator is used for radiotherapy that the general public can use. The linear accelerator is a large device that can speed up electrons, ions, or other particles and slam them into targets in order to release subatomic particles and radiation. Charged particles are accelerated by an electric field that is, the parallel force =qE).

Cyclotrons and synchrotrons are both particle accelerators that work in different ways.   Synchrotrons keep the particle in a constant radius. To facilitate this, the magnetic field strength has to increase with the speed of the particle that is V/B = q/m X the radius. However in relation to cyclotrons, the energy of the particle is increased by the electric field between the two semi-circle Dees. The applied magnetic field only facilitates the bending of the path that is, the perpendicular f=qvB). Example of synchrotrons is The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and The Large Hadron Collider

Due to the conservation of momentum, if two high speed particles collide head-on, almost all energy is available for the production of new particles. For any of the particle accelerators to be detected, cloud chambers, bubble chambers and modern detectors were built.

Stronger accelerators help find new particle. Murray Gell-Mann is one of the scientists that contributed to the...