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The Missing Link Accelerator
| Article
# : |
17425 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1990 |
2,522 Words |
| Author
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Robert W. Hamm
Robert W. Hamm was an accelerator physicist on the RFQ
development team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico. He is now president of AccSys Technology, Inc., a
company that he and three other Los Alamos scientists founded
in 1985 to develop the RFQ linac for commercial applications. |
Beyond the visible world of everyday life extends the microscopic world of amoebae and spirochetes. Yet smaller still is the molecular world of viruses and DNA, themselves composed of individual elements from the atomic world. Then finally deep within each atom lies the atomic nucleus and the world of elementary particles within it.
Despite the remoteness of the elementary particle world, it is here that our visible world's appearance and character are determined. Yet in the particle world the boundaries are fuzzy at best, and it is here that energy is indistinguishable from matter. To study this realm, scientists use ions (charged atoms) to which they have imparted kinetic energy through the use of massive machines (accelerators) whose size and cost necessarily limit their application to research laboratories. Clearly a compact, even portable, accelerator would greatly increase the applications of this valuable technology; such a compact accelerator would be the missing link in the chain of technologies for using ions not just as research tools but as practical tools for mankind.
Scientists are by nature always trying to invent "a better mousetrap," and accelerator physicists (a relatively rare breed) are no exception. So when a new concept for a linear accelerator proposed by two Russian scientists surfaced in 1977, a skeptical but excited group of physicists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States, led by E.A. Knapp, undertook to prove whether or not it was valid. The concept was of a very compact linear accelerator that could accept large quantities of ions with low kinetic energies and accelerate them to much higher energies. In a discipline where a linear accelerator had traditionally been a large, complicated device, the concept was so revolutionary that many physicists doubted that it would work. Yet, much to the delight of the Los Alamos researchers, the device they built and tested in 1980, the Radio Frequency Quadrupole linear accelerator (RFQ linac"), was successful. It was indeed a revolutionary new technology for accelerating ions, the charged particles produced by removing or adding electrons to the atoms of any basic element. This unique accelerator has since evolved into a multitude of forms throughout the world, producing energetic ion beams for useful applications ranging from pure research, to medicine, industry, and even to military use in space. From the production of radioisotopes for medical use to the detection of explosives in airline baggage, this rapidly emerging technology promises to be one of the most useful applications of accelerator physics in our modern high-tech
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