News and Updates
Decision on a Pre-accelerator Design
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 by Raymond Jimenez
I've decided to go with a betatron as my pre-accelerator. It's a relatively simple design, requiring less math than an RF electron linac, and it's much more compact.
The only problem with a betatron is that the vacuum chamber must be non-conductive (many in the past used silvered glass chambers), so I might opt to make my own vacuum chamber. Scientific glassblowers are relatively rare, so I would need to find somebody who would be willing to contribute substantial amounts of time.
Other than the vacuum chamber, the iron return yoke needs to be designed and made. While it's not a high frequency yoke (usually about 180Hz), it needs to be made out of laminate so that eddy currents don't eat up the power. I can't work with iron here, so I'll also need to find a willing transformer company.
Finding information about betatrons is proving difficult; the term "betatron" is more in use as "betatron oscillations", and betatrons have been long surpassed in the science world by RF linacs for higher energies.
An amateur particle accelerator
I'm trying to build a small (1/2 meter diameter) synchrotron.
What is a synchrotron?
It's a type of particle accelerator that's being used in the latest-and-greatest physics labs. While my writeup about synchrotrons isn't quite done, you can find a good explanation in the SPring-8 comic strips.
It sounds crazy, but small synchrotrons have been created before. There's UMER at the University of Maryland, and there's an even smaller synchrotron called the Small Isochronous Ring. In fact, there's a company, Lyncean Technologies, whose main products are small (1x2m) synchrotron light sources.
It's a little more far-fetched for a high schooler to do it (I'm in my senior year), but even cyclotrons have been built before, by Fred Niell (twice) and by Samuel Goldwasser. There's currently one group of high schoolers building one right now.
I like to stretch the limits and see how far a high school senior can go in terms of engineering and physics. I've built a fusor, so I have a little experience with similar equipment, but I've got a lot to learn.