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Links in the endnotes of "Beams - The Story of Particle Accelerators and the Science They Discover" published by Springer

Home Page:https://link.springer.com/book/9783031518515

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Beams - The Story of Particle Accelerators and the Science They Discover

book cover

This page provides web links to publications mentioned in the endnotes of my forthcoming book Beams - The Story of Particle Accelerators and the Science They Discover. The book will be published as a Copernicus book by Springer in April 2024.

Many of the links point to JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org). The first page is usually open to read, but access to the full document might either require help from a friendly librarian or institutional access from a school or a university. Pages from CERN Courier (https://cerncourier.com) or nobelprize.org (https://www.nobelprize.org) are openly accessible.

I also wrote a brief history of Swedish accelerators, quasi as an appendix to Beams. The title is Swedish Beams and it is available from arXix:2404.07088.

And there is a brief history of German accelerators, entitled German Beams as well. It is available from arXix:2405.03430.

Chapter 1: Introduction

The answer to "what is physics?" provides the book's theme: to figure out the world and build the instruments to help with the figuring. By focusing on the press conference at CERN where the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced, the link between the figuring (Higgs boson as last puzzle bit of the standard model) and the instruments (the Large Hadron Collider and the detectors) is firmly established. The chapter then illustrates how physics advances by distilling experiments into physical laws, a process referred to as 'unification'.

Links

Chapter 2: Accelerator prehistory

Crookes tube are introduced as precursors to cathode ray tubes that produce the first beams. These rays turned out to be the first elementary particle, the electron. Both X-ray tubes and triodes as the first electronic components are only the two most significant inventions that mark the technological spinoff.

Links

Chapter 3: Nature's accelerators

Rutherford's great idea to use radioactive sources for scattering experiments leads to Bohr's model of the atom. Positrons, muons, pions, an V-particles that behave strangely" are found in cosmic rays. The strong nuclear force and the weak interaction emerge as two fundamental forces besides electromagnetic forces and gravity. The strong force is responsible for the stability of atomic nuclei, whereas the weak interaction causes the spontaneous decay of particles that is associated with radioactivity. Photographic plates, cloud chambers, and Geiger counters are discussed as the detectors used to analyze subatomic reactions.

Links

Chapter 4: The echo of Rutherford's call

Rutherford's vision of man-made particle sources leads to early accelerators, among them the Cockroft-Walton and van de Graaff accelerators, as well as cyclotrons. They are used to produce new elements and isotopes, such as technetium, tritium, and carbon-14. Especially cyclotrons are instrumental in treating cancer patients and producing material for atomic bombs. After the invention of phase focusing much higher energy became accessible, making a systematic study of the nuclear forces possible. But the energy is still insufficient to produce V-particles that will play a crucial role in understanding the weak interaction.

Links

Chapter 5: The Cosmotron meets the strangeness of physics

A great idea (synchrotrons) leads to the construction of the Cosmotron and the Bevatron, where the antiproton was discovered. The ability of the new synchrotrons to produce large numbers of V-particles opens up the way for systematic studies that lead to the concept of strangeness. Moreover, it reveals the weird behavior of V-particles in the weak interaction and especially the so-called 'violation of parity.' The antiproton and many, many more new particles, populating the "zoo" that desperately was in need of an ordering scheme.

Links

Chapter 6: CERN and the taming of the zoo

A great idea (alternating-gradient focusing) leads to the construction of the PS at CERN and the AGS in Brookhaven as members of the second generation of synchrotrons. They significantly extend the energy range of accelerators and find the muon neutrino, weak neutral currents, and an asymmetry between matter and antimatter. The quark model emerges as the ordering scheme behind the "zoo" and predicts the Omega-minus particle, which is subsequently discovered in the AGS. But why are free quarks never observed?

Links

Chapter 7: A monster encounters quarks

A great idea (klystrons) leads to electron linear accelerators all the way to the 3 km long 'monster.' They are first used to determine the size of nuclei and then to look deep inside protons, where partons were discovered that were later identified with the quarks. Quantum chromodynamics emerges as a theory for the strong nuclear force that even explains why quarks are quasi-free inside protons, but can never escape individually.

Links

Chapter 8: Spearheading charm

The great idea to build electron-positron collider rings and to squeeze the beams to small dimensions at the collision point leads to the discovery of the fourth quark, called 'charm.' The concept of particle generations emerges and soon the tau, as the first member of the third generation, is discovered. Larger rings, operating at higher energy, discover gluons as force-carriers of quantum chromodynamics.

Links

Chapter 9: The Tevatron and generation matters

Great ideas (cascaded accelerators, separate function magnets, superconducting magnets) enable the third generation of proton synchrotrons (Main ring at Fermilab, SPS at CERN). The fifth quark, called 'bottom', is discovered at Fermilab. The Intersecting Storage Ring at CERN is the first proton-proton collider where much of the technology was developed to make later colliders possible. In particular, the great idea to use stochastic cooling to accumulate sufficient numbers of antiprotons makes operation of proton-antiproton colliders possible. First the SPS is converted to a proton-antiproton collider and discovers the Z and W bosons as the force-carriers of the weak force. The Tevatron at Fermilab discovers the sixths quark, called 'top' and the tau neutrino, which completes the third generation of particles.

Links

Chapter 10: Particle horns of plenty

The proton colliders from the previous chapter reached high energies and discovered new particles, but only in very small numbers. Precision measurements to determine their properties required much higher collision rates with point-like particles. The electron-positron colliders LEP and SLC measured many properties of the Z boson that indicate only three generations of elementary particles exist. After upgrading LEP with superconducting cavities, W bosons could be produced and helped to pin down many properties of the standard model of particle physics. B-factories produced copious numbers of B mesons that allowed to investigate their decay, which is closely linked to the preponderance of matter over antimatter in our universe.

Links

Chapter 11: Large hadron colliders

A great idea (two-in-one magnets) makes it possible to install the proton-proton collider LHC in the tunnel previously occupied by LEP. It was tasked to find the last missing particle of the standard model, the Higgs boson. Enabled by a very large beam energies and intensities this elusive particle was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS detectors in 2012. Subsequently many other of its parameters were determined. In the future upgrades to higher collision rates and to higher energies will expand the capabilities of LHC far beyond the present level.

Links

Chapter 12: Future accelerators

Several candidates for future accelerators are discussed. The linear colliders ILC and CLIC will provide electron-positron collision at much higher energy than previously accessible in LEP or SLC. They will explore many details of the Higgs boson and carefully determine its properties. Another candidate for a future accelerator to address the physics of the Higgs boson is the Future Circular Collider (FCC). This large ring will have three times the circumference of LHC. A high-energy muon collider will provide point-like collisions with moderately heavy particles, albeit at the expense of the short lifetime of muons. Many technical details of this approach need to be worked out in the future. Plasma accelerators provide another option to reach high particle energies. They work by exciting plasma waves in a gas and using the emerging electric field to accelerate particles to high energies.

Chapter 13: Special-purpose accelerators

This chapter gives a brief account of synchrotron-light sources and free-electron lasers followed by a description of spallation neutron sources spallation neutron sources. These accelerator use light or neutrons to analyze samples on the atomic scale. Cyclotrons and electron linear accelerators are used for medical applications. in particular to treat cancer and to diagnose illnesses. Industrial accelerators are essential for manufacturing computer chips, to analyze samples from material and life sciences, and to date materials of cultural heritage.

Links

Chapter 14: Epilogue

This chapter summarizes the standard model of elementary particles and points out a number of open questions, among them what dark matter of dark energy are. This suggests that there is a lot of 'figuring out' to do.

Links

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Links in the endnotes of "Beams - The Story of Particle Accelerators and the Science They Discover" published by Springer

https://link.springer.com/book/9783031518515

history-of-scienceparticle-acceleratorshigh-energy-physicsparticle-physics

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