Electron Linacs for High Energy Physics

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to introduce some of the basic physical principles underlying the operation of electron linear accelerators (electron linacs). Electron linacs have applications ranging from linacs with an energy of a few MeV, such that the electrons are approximately relativistic, to future electron-positron linear colliders having a collision energy in the several-TeV energy range. For the most part, only the main accelerating linac is treated in this article.

Compact XFEL Schemes

“…For a velocity ~c and a distance between gaps of a few cm, the frequency of the RF source ~GHz. High energy electron LINACs were, therefore, not possible until the development of high power microwave RF sources (Wilson, 2008). The relativistic relation between particle kinetic energy in electron volts, E K , the rest energy E 0 and the normalized velocity is…”