Synchrotron

[3] Edwin McMillan constructed the first electron synchrotron in 1945, arriving at the idea independently, having missed Veksler's publication (which was only available in a Soviet journal, although in English).

For particles that are not close to the speed of light, the frequency of the applied electromagnetic field may also change to follow their non-constant circulation time.

This allows the vacuum chamber for the particles to be a large thin torus, rather than a disk as in previous, compact accelerator designs.

Also, the thin profile of the vacuum chamber allowed for a more efficient use of magnetic fields than in a cyclotron, enabling the cost-effective construction of larger synchrotrons.

[citation needed] While the first synchrotrons and storage rings like the Cosmotron and ADA strictly used the toroid shape, the strong focusing principle independently discovered by Ernest Courant et al.[12][13] and Nicholas Christofilos[14] allowed the complete separation of the accelerator into components with specialized functions along the particle path, shaping the path into a round-cornered polygon.

[15] The combination of time-dependent guiding magnetic fields and the strong focusing principle enabled the design and operation of modern large-scale accelerator facilities like colliders and synchrotron light sources.

Electron/positron accelerators may also be limited by the emission of synchrotron radiation, resulting in a partial loss of the particle beam's kinetic energy.

The pre-acceleration can be realized by a chain of other accelerator structures like a linac, a microtron or another synchrotron; all of these in turn need to be fed by a particle source comprising a simple high voltage power supply, typically a Cockcroft-Walton generator.

The name of this proton accelerator comes from its power, in the range of 6.3 GeV (then called BeV for billion electron volts; the name predates the adoption of the SI prefix giga-).

[citation needed] The largest device of this type seriously proposed was the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), which was to be built in the United States.

While construction was begun, the project was cancelled in 1994, citing excessive budget overruns — this was due to naïve cost estimation and economic management issues rather than any basic engineering flaws.

While there is still potential for yet more powerful proton and heavy particle cyclic accelerators, it appears that the next step up in electron beam energy must avoid losses due to synchrotron radiation.