2. A circular electron accelerator in which the frequency of the accelerating system is constant, the strength of the magnetic guide field increases, and the electrons move in orbits of nearly constant radius.
3. A synchrotron (an apparatus used in nuclear physics to produce beams of energetic charged particles and to direct them against various targets) designed to accelerate electrons.
The electron beam is allowed to strike an internal target, producing high-energy gamma rays which are used outside the machine.
2. A circular, very high-energy particle accelerator that accelerates protons through the action of magnetic fields and a high-frequency electric field.
Particle beams from synchrotron accelerators can be used in medical treatment, in medical and biological research, and in physics.
The name of the synchrotron is derived from the way in which particles are accelerated: a beam of particles is kept in step with an oscillating radio-frequency acceleration voltage as the particles circle the accelerator ring.
In a typical synchrotron, a particle will travel millions of miles in an evacuated pipe only a few inches in diameter.
The phase stability that makes the synchrotron possible was discovered in the 1940s by V.I. Veksler, a Soviet physicist, and E.M. McMillan, an American physicist who proposed the name of the machine.
McMillan designed an electron synchrotron with a beam energy of 300 MeV (million electric volts), built at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California.
It is characterized by being polarized.