Proton Synchrotron
Encyclopedia
Particle accelerator
A particle accelerator is a device that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. An ordinary CRT television set is a simple form of accelerator. There are two basic types: electrostatic and oscillating field accelerators.In...
at CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
, built as a 28 GeV
GEV
GEV or GeV may stand for:*GeV or gigaelectronvolt, a unit of energy equal to billion electron volts*GEV or Grid Enabled Vehicle that is fully or partially powered by the electric grid, see plug-in electric vehicle...
proton
Proton
The proton is a subatomic particle with the symbol or and a positive electric charge of 1 elementary charge. One or more protons are present in the nucleus of each atom, along with neutrons. The number of protons in each atom is its atomic number....
accelerator in the late 1950s and put into operation in 1959. It takes the protons from the Proton Synchrotron Booster
Proton Synchrotron Booster
The Proton Synchrotron Booster, a synchrotron, is the first and smallest circular proton accelerator in the accelerator chain at the CERN Large Hadron Collider injection complex. The accelerator was built in 1972, and contains four superimposed rings with a radius of 25 meters...
at a kinetic energy of 1.4 GeV and lead ions from the Low Energy Ion Ring
Low Energy Ion Ring
The Low Energy Ion Ring is a particle accelerator at CERN used to accelerate lead ions from the LINAC 3 to the Proton Synchrotron to provide lead ions for collisions within the Large Hadron Collider .-History:...
(LEIR) at 72 MeV per nucleon. It has been operated as an injector for the Intersecting Storage Rings
Intersecting Storage Rings
The ISR was a particle accelerator at CERN. It was the world's first hadron collider, and ran from 1971 to 1984, with a maximum center of mass energy of 62 GeV...
(ISR), the Super Proton Synchrotron
Super Proton Synchrotron
The Super Proton Synchrotron is a particle accelerator of the synchrotron type at CERN. It is housed in a circular tunnel, in circumference, straddling the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, Switzerland. The SPS was designed by a team led by John Adams, director-general of what was...
(SPS) and the Large Electron-Positron Collider
Large Electron-Positron Collider
The Large Electron–Positron Collider was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed.It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland. LEP was a circular collider with a circumference of 27 kilometres built in a...
(LEP). Starting in November 2009, the PS machine delivers protons and will provide lead ion beams for the Large Hadron Collider
Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature....
(LHC).
It has also been used as a particle source for other experiments, such as the Gargamelle
Gargamelle
Gargamelle was a giant bubble chamber detector at CERN, designed mainly for the detection of neutrino interactions. Built in France, with a diameter of nearly 2 meters and 4.8 meters in length, Gargamelle held nearly 12 cubic meters of freon...
bubble chamber
Bubble chamber
A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. It was invented in 1952 by Donald A. Glaser, for which he was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics...
for which it supplied a neutrino beam. This led to the discovery of the weak
Weak interaction
Weak interaction , is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, alongside the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity. It is responsible for the radioactive decay of subatomic particles and initiates the process known as hydrogen fusion in stars...
neutral current
Neutral current
Weak neutral current interactions are one of the ways in which subatomic particles can interact by means of the weak force. These interactions are mediated by the boson...
in 1974.
The PS machine is a circular accelerator with a circumference of 628.3 m. It is a versatile machine having accelerated proton
Proton
The proton is a subatomic particle with the symbol or and a positive electric charge of 1 elementary charge. One or more protons are present in the nucleus of each atom, along with neutrons. The number of protons in each atom is its atomic number....
s, antiproton
Antiproton
The antiproton is the antiparticle of the proton. Antiprotons are stable, but they are typically short-lived since any collision with a proton will cause both particles to be annihilated in a burst of energy....
s, electron
Electron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...
s, positron
Positron
The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1e, a spin of ½, and has the same mass as an electron...
s and species of ion
Ion
An ion is an atom or molecule in which the total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons, giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge. The name was given by physicist Michael Faraday for the substances that allow a current to pass between electrodes in a...
s. Major upgrades have improved its performance by more than a factor of 1000 since 1959. The only main components remaining from its original installation some 50 years ago are the bending magnets and the buildings.