SPEAR

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an article about a collider. For uses of spear, see spear or spear (disambiguation).

SPEAR (originally Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Ring, now simply a name) is a collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. It began running in 1972, colliding electrons and positrons with an energy of 3 GeV. During the 1970s, experiments at the accelerator played a key role in particle physics research, including the discovery of the J/ψ particle and other charmonium states and the discovery of the tau lepton.

Today, SPEAR is used as a synchrotron radiation source for the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.

[edit] References

• Brief explanation of the acronym in SLACspeak
• 25th Anniversary Info from SLAC
• SPEAR history from CERN Courier