Alexander W Chao – författare

As accelerator science and technology progressed over the past several decades, the accelerators themselves have undergone major improvements in multiple performance factors: beam energy, beam power, and beam brightness. As a consequence, accelerators have found applications in a wide range of fields in our life and in our society. The current volume is dedicated to applications in energy and security, two of the most important and urgent topics in today's world.This volume makes an effort to provide a review as complete and up to date as possible of this broad and challenging subject. It contains overviews on each of the two topics and a series of articles for in-depth discussions including heavy ion accelerator driven inertial fusion, linear accelerator-based ADS systems, circular accelerator-based ADS systems, accelerator-reactor interface, accelerators for fusion material testing, cargo inspection, proton radiography, compact neutron generators and detectors. It also has a review article on accelerator science and technology in Canada with a focus on the TRIUMF laboratory, and an article on the life of Bruno Touschek, a renowned accelerator physicist.

The theme of this volume, “Medical Applications of Accelerators”, is of enormous importance to human health and has a deep impact on our society.The invention of particle accelerators in the early 20th century created a whole new world for producing energetic X-rays, electrons, protons, neutrons and other particle beams. Immediately these beams found revolutionary applications in medicine. There are two important yet distinct medical applications. One is that accelerators produce radioisotopes for various nuclear medicines for millions of patients each year. The other is that accelerators produce particle beams for radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer. The particle beams can be X-rays (generated by high-energy electrons), protons, neutrons or heavy ions such as carbon. Today there are more than 5,000 accelerators routinely used in hospitals all over the world for nuclear medicine and cancer therapy. The great potential of accelerator applications in medicine can hardly be exaggerated.This volume contains 14 articles, all written by distinguished scholars.

Over the last half century we have witnessed tremendous progress in the production of high-quality photons by electrons in accelerators. This dramatic evolution has seen four generations of accelerators as photon sources. The 1st generation used the electron storage rings built primarily for high-energy physics experiments, and the synchrotron radiation from the bending magnets was used parasitically. The 2nd generation involved rings dedicated to synchrotron radiation applications, with the radiation again from the bending magnets. The 3rd generation, currently the workhorse of these photon sources, is dedicated advanced storage rings that employ not only bending magnets but also insertion devices (wigglers and undulators) as the source of the radiation. The 4th generation, which is now entering operation, is photon sources based on the free electron laser (FEL), an invention made in the early 1970s.Each generation yielded growths in brightness and time resolution that were unimaginable just a few years earlier. In particular, the progression from the 3rd to 4th generation is a true revolution; the peak brilliance of coherent soft and hard x-rays has increased by 7-10 orders of magnitude, and the image resolution has reached the angstrom (1 Å = 10-10 meters) and femto-second (1 fs = 10-15 second) scales. These impressive capabilities have fostered fundamental scientific advances and led to an explosion of numerous possibilities in many important research areas including material science, chemistry, molecular biology and the life sciences. Even more remarkably, this field of photon source invention and development shows no signs of slowing down. Studies have already been started on the next generation of x-ray sources, which would have a time resolution in the atto-second (1 as = 10-18 second) regime, comparable to the time of electron motion inside atoms. It can be fully expected that these photon sources will stand out among the most powerful future science research tools. The physics community as well as the entire scientific community will hear of many pioneering and groundbreaking research results using these sources in the coming years.This volume contains fifteen articles, all written by leading scientists in their respective fields. It is aimed at the designers, builders and users of accelerator-based photon sources as well as general audience who are interested in this topic.

Since their debut in the late 1920s, particle accelerators have evolved into a backbone for the development of science and technology in modern society. Of about 30,000 accelerators at work in the world today, a majority is for applications in industry (about 20,000 systems worldwide).There are two major categories of industrial applications: materials processing and treatment, and materials analysis. Materials processing and treatment includes ion implantation (semi-conductor materials, metals, ceramics, etc.) and electron beam irradiation (sterilization of medical devices, food pasteurization, treatment of carcasses and tires, cross-linking of polymers, cutting and welding, curing of composites, etc.). Materials analysis covers ion beam analysis (IBA), non-destructive detection using photons and neutrons, as well as accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). All the products that are processed, treated and inspected using beams from particle accelerators are estimated to have a collective value of US$500 billion per annum worldwide. Accelerators are also applied for environment protection, such as purifying drinking water, treating waste water, disinfecting sewage sludge and removing pollutants from flue gases.Industrial accelerators continue to evolve, in terms of new applications, qualities and capabilities, and reduction of their costs. Breakthroughs are encountered whenever a new product is made, or an existing product becomes more cost effective. Their impact on our society continues to grow with the potential to address key issues in economics or the society of today.This volume contains fourteen articles, all authored by renowned scientists in their respective fields.

Over the past several decades major advances in accelerators have resulted from breakthroughs in accelerator science and accelerator technology. After the introduction of a new accelerator physics concept or the implementation of a new technology, a leap in accelerator performance followed. A well-known representation of these advances is the Livingston chart, which shows an exponential growth of accelerator performance over the last seven or eight decades. One of the breakthrough accelerator technologies that support this exponential growth is superconducting technology. Recognizing this major technological advance, we dedicate Volume 5 of Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technology (RAST) to superconducting technology and its applications.Two major applications are superconducting magnets (SC magnets) and superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities. SC magnets provide much higher magnetic field than their room-temperature counterparts, thus allowing accelerators to reach higher energies with comparable size as well as much reduced power consumption. SRF technology allows field energy storage for continuous wave applications and energy recovery, in addition to the advantage of tremendous power savings and better particle beam quality. In this volume, we describe both technologies and their applications. We also include discussion of the associated R&D in superconducting materials and the future prospects for these technologies.

As particle accelerators strive forever increasing performance, high intensity particle beams become one of the critical demands requested across the board by a majority of accelerator users (proton, electron and ion) and for most applications. Much effort has been made by our community to pursue high intensity accelerator performance on a number of fronts. Recognizing its importance, we devote this volume to Accelerators for High Intensity Beams. High intensity accelerators have become a frontier and a network for innovation. They are responsible for many scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs that have changed our way of life, often taken for granted. A wide range of topics is covered in the fourteen articles in this volume.