Answer to Question #85015 in Electricity and Magnetism for akash singh

Question

What is synchrocyclotron? How it is used to accelerate particles to a few hundred
MeV of energy? Explain.

Answer 1

A pure cyclotron can be used to accelerate particles only up to energy of 20 MeV due to a relativistic change in mass with the magnitude of the velocity predicted by Einstein. This effect leads to the fact that a particle with an increased mass moves out of phase with an alternating electric field.

In 1944, the Soviet physicist Vladimir Wexler and, independently of him, a year later, the American Edwin McMillan came up with the principle of autophasing. Their idea was to customize the electric field in the gap, which would push the lagging particles more strongly, and those who ran ahead would weaker. As a result, the particles will always hold in the form of a compact, not spreading clot.

Finally, to get rid of engineering problems, the particles began to run instead of a huge disk into a long tube rolled into a ring, and in order to keep them in a constant orbit, the magnetic field was increased simultaneously with increasing energy.