http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1937 ... -in-the-us
How much power are you able to pack in one of these? They're not giving a clue. Wasn't part of the point of the larger machines the greater power?
On the other hand, there are industrial uses for high energy electron beams, this might feed some of that.
Foot-long accelerator?
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kunkmiester
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Foot-long accelerator?
Evil is evil, no matter how small
Re: Foot-long accelerator?
Electron beams are probably easier generated by heating and acceleration. Vacuum tubes.kunkmiester wrote: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1937 ... -in-the-us
How much power are you able to pack in one of these? They're not giving a clue. Wasn't part of the point of the larger machines the greater power?
On the other hand, there are industrial uses for high energy electron beams, this might feed some of that.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Re: Foot-long accelerator?
A plasma wakefield accelerator is promising for high energies from a compact device. I would be greatly surprised if it could deliver high current. For energies of interest to nuclear physics (including fusion) the old Van de Graaff accelerator is a better option.
The daylight is uncomfortably bright for eyes so long in the dark.
Re: Foot-long accelerator?
The new technologycan create high energy particle beams with machines are much smaller and thus much cheaper and accesible than the huge cyclotrons like Ferma or CERN. They are currently are much weaker than the big cyclotrons but that is not the point. Irregardless of whether they can scale up to new world record accelerator beasts, currently the important aspect is that they provide relatively cheap access to the high energy physics realm for college labs. Many can get their feet wet instead of just a few elite candidates. The interesting atom smashing processes begin beyond a few million eV so accelerators in this range (perhaps up to ~ 1 GeV) would be very useful.
Also, consider that not only energy quality, but quantity is important. Fermi produced particle beams strong enough to produce Higgs particles, but CERN was able to create particle beams more powerful, but also more intense (at the energies of interest). Analyzing a few billion collisions to extract a significant result is much easier than trying to do so in only a few million. I think this is a major benefit of the Large Hadron Collider. It uses heavy atoms as the target (such as gold). When hit by another gold ion traveling at high speeds, a huge spray of energetic particles can result. The energy per particle cannot match CERN, but there is such a high quantity of them (beam intensity) it makes extracting significant results from statistically rare events more likely. It can also be much more messy so it needs correspondingly intense and capable analysis methods to extract the signal from the noise. This is an area where the wakefield accelerators may also prove useful, not in final per particle energy, but in the intensity of the beam that may be possible with batteries of these machines. If highly efficient they also may serve as sources for relatively large supplies of exotic particles like mesons.
Dan Tibbets
Also, consider that not only energy quality, but quantity is important. Fermi produced particle beams strong enough to produce Higgs particles, but CERN was able to create particle beams more powerful, but also more intense (at the energies of interest). Analyzing a few billion collisions to extract a significant result is much easier than trying to do so in only a few million. I think this is a major benefit of the Large Hadron Collider. It uses heavy atoms as the target (such as gold). When hit by another gold ion traveling at high speeds, a huge spray of energetic particles can result. The energy per particle cannot match CERN, but there is such a high quantity of them (beam intensity) it makes extracting significant results from statistically rare events more likely. It can also be much more messy so it needs correspondingly intense and capable analysis methods to extract the signal from the noise. This is an area where the wakefield accelerators may also prove useful, not in final per particle energy, but in the intensity of the beam that may be possible with batteries of these machines. If highly efficient they also may serve as sources for relatively large supplies of exotic particles like mesons.
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.
Re: Foot-long accelerator?
Indeed, Van de Graaff accelerators are probably still the best choice of low energy acceleration. Admittedly tough, I have no idea of the Wakefield accelerators capacities in this low energy regime. Van de Graaff generators have historically been used as the initial accelerator stage before the particles are fed into a cyclotron or linear accelerator. They can easily accelerate particles up to a few MeV.
For fusion, particle energies of up to a few hundred KeV is as high as you want to go. Any higher leads to progressively poorer performance for any conceivable fuel. The best mono energetic levels for D-T fusion is probably ~ 40-50 KeV, for D-D ~ 80-100 KeV, for D-He3 ~ 100- 120 KeV, for P-B11~ 400 KeV. If your fusion scheme can utilize beam- beam collisions as the dominate fusion reaction, the per particle energies would be ~ 1/2 of these.
Dan Tibbets
For fusion, particle energies of up to a few hundred KeV is as high as you want to go. Any higher leads to progressively poorer performance for any conceivable fuel. The best mono energetic levels for D-T fusion is probably ~ 40-50 KeV, for D-D ~ 80-100 KeV, for D-He3 ~ 100- 120 KeV, for P-B11~ 400 KeV. If your fusion scheme can utilize beam- beam collisions as the dominate fusion reaction, the per particle energies would be ~ 1/2 of these.
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.