Talk:Linear particle accelerator

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, which collaborates on articles related to physics.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid	This article is on a subject of Mid importance within physics.
Help with this template This article has been rated but has no comments. If appropriate, please review the article and leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctor's mess.
B	This page has been rated as B-Class on the quality assessment scale
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance assessment scale

Contents 1 This 2 medical linacs 3 explain... 4 Advatages

[edit] This

This article needs to be cleaned up. There is confusion as to the distiction between an electrostatic type Linear Accelerator and a RF based "Linac". Both types of accelerator should be covered in the article, but at the moment there is a confused mess as to which one is being talked about in each section. Martyman 04:31, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be a large number of people editing these articles but no-one has commented on my suggestion here. Do people agree that linear accelerators include non-rf machines? --Martyman-(talk) 00:13, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

There should be a headline for the actual explaination how the LINAC works, not just "A linear particle accelerator consists of the following elements". It can be irritating. 16:00, 15 December 2005 (GMT)

[edit] medical linacs

need a mention. they are most common type of linac. Andybuckle 16:01, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] explain...

"Medical grade LINACs accelerate electrons using a complex bending magnet arrangement and a 6-30 million..." Once the particles are forced into a magenetic field whose force field is not along the kinteic vector syncroton radition is unavoidable.....where's the mistake?Slicky 08:32, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Advatages

Under this heading it is said: '"LINACs of appropriate design are capable of accelerating heavy ions to energies exceeding those available in ring-type accelerators, which are limited by the strength of the magnetic fields required to maintain the ions on a curved path."'

This cannot be correct as the highest energy heavy ion accelerators are circular (e.g. Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider).

The advantage of a linear accelerator for heavy ions is not so obvious. It is more of a question why not use other accelerator types. Assuming the beam comes from a source (with an electrostatic accelerator, to what will still be a very low energy or velocity)

• Sychrotron: You would need a very weak magnetic field to bend the beam, or would need to use a small synchrotron. Then the first accelerator stage would change the energy so much that the bending radius for the magnets would be wrong. When the beam arrived at the initial injection point, you would have to stop injecting. In this case you would not have collected much beam.
• Race track or recirculating Linac: The ions are too slow to arrive to the relativistic speed necessary to use this type of accelerator.
• Cyclotron: This would work very well, and it is unclear why a linear accelerator should be used agains a cycltoron.

Scaler1112 08:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)