particle accelerator

British  

noun

1. a machine for accelerating charged elementary particles to very high energies, used for research in nuclear physics See also linear accelerator cyclotron betatron synchrotron synchrocyclotron

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particle accelerator Scientific  

1. Any of several machines, such as the cyclotron and linear accelerator, that increase the speed and energy of protons, electrons, or other atomic particles, and direct them at atomic nuclei or other particles to cause high-energy collisions. Such collisions produce other particles, whose paths are tracked and analyzed. Particle accelerators are used to study the nature of the atomic nucleus, subatomic particles, and the forces relating them, and to create radioactive isotopes.

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particle accelerator Cultural  

1. A machine (sometimes called an “atom smasher”), often very large, that brings elementary particles (usually either protons or electrons) to a very high speed and then allows them to collide with a target. From the resulting behavior of the particles and the target, scientists deduce the structure of the particles.

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Closer Look

The particle accelerators used by physicists are not as remote from our everyday experience as one might imagine. The cathode ray tubes of televisions and computer monitors, commonly known as picture tubes, are in fact small, low-energy particle accelerators, creating beams of electrons guided and focused by magnets that hit a phosphorescent screen to produce light. The electrons, having an electric charge, are accelerated by an electric field produced by a voltage difference of about a thousand volts. Accelerating electrons to higher velocities, using voltages in the tens of thousands, allows higher-energy radiation to be released; the x-ray tubes used in diagnostic imaging operate on this principle. Today's high-energy particle accelerators, such as synchrocyclotrons and synchrotrons, accelerate charged particles such as electrons and protons using the same basic principles as ordinary picture tubes, but to much higher velocities. These machines are ring-shaped, often extremely large (some more than ten miles in length), and they accelerate particles to velocities so close to the speed of light that the effects of relativity, such as time dilation and increased particle mass, become important factors. For theoretical physicists, these high speeds are generated to smash the particles against other particles as hard as possible—just like smashing a rock against a wall—just to see what happens. For example, particles once thought to be elementary, like protons, have been shown to consist of yet smaller constituents (quarks, in this case) by observing the scattering patterns that follow certain collisions. A large variety of exotic particles have been created as well in the shower of particles that result from some collisions, and explaining their existence and behavior has deepened theories of fundamental physics. From the explosive aftermath of these artificial high-energy particle collisions, robust theories of the most fundamental constituents of the natural world are being developed.

Discover More

Almost all of our knowledge of the nucleus and of elementary particles depends on experiments using particle accelerators.

Example Sentences

At the facility, a synchrotron particle accelerator generated an intense X ray beam capable of scanning many specimens quickly.

From Science Daily

In both experiments, scientists generate beams of neutrinos using particle accelerators and send them across vast underground distances to massive detectors.

From Science Daily

Mark Thomson, the new head of Europe's physics laboratory CERN, voiced confidence Tuesday about raising the billions of dollars needed to build by far the world's biggest particle accelerator.

From Barron's

Making this discovery required a multibillion-dollar particle accelerator, thousands of scientists across dozens of countries, and papers with multipage author lists.

From The Wall Street Journal

XLight plans to build massive “free electron lasers” powered by a particle accelerator to create a more powerful and precise light source for use in chip fabrication plants, or fabs.

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• accelerator