A particle accelerator is a device that accelerates charged particles in an electric field by applying a force to the particles, increasing their energy. Therefore, a particle accelerator should be defined as a device that uses an electromagnetic field to accelerate charged particles. It is a modern device that artificially delivers various high-energy particle beams or radiation lines. Particle accelerators can accelerate electrons, protons, ions and other charged particles to speeds of several thousand kilometres per second, several tens of thousands of kilometres per second or even close to the speed of light (light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second in a vacuum).

Particle accelerators are used in a wide range of applications. For research purposes, they are essential for high-energy physics experiments such as colliders, imaging, free electron lasers, synchrotron light sources, fission neutron sources, electron microscopes and so on. For medical purposes, such as photon radiotherapy and proton radiotherapy; for industrial purposes, such as industrial irradiation, container testing, etc., and even for television sets, where the picture tube was once a small accelerator.

Particle accelerators can be divided into two types: linear and toroidal. The ring particle accelerator is in fact a variant of the linear particle accelerator.

The principle of the linear accelerator is very simple, it uses the microwave electric field inside the disk charge waveguide to accelerate charged particles, the microwaves work in a traveling wave state, theoretically this structure is able to increase the energy of the particles infinitely, as long as the same acceleration units are constantly cascaded

Linear accelerator (image from the internet)

A toroidal accelerator is one in which the charged particles are orbited in a closed ring, thus reducing the size of the accelerator and allowing the particles to accumulate in the ring, which is often called a storage ring. The principle of operation is simply that the particles go round and round in the storage ring, but every time they go round they pass through a high frequency cavity (equivalent to a microwave resonant cavity), controlling the electromagnetic field in the cavity so that each time a particle arrives it happens to be in the forward axial electric field, so that the particle is equivalent to being "kicked" forward each time it passes through the high frequency cavity, i.e. being accelerated by the The electric field accelerates the particle a little.

Ring accelerator (image from the internet)

The circular motion of the particles, however, inevitably leads to Synchrotron Radiation, which is a disaster for experiments aimed at accelerating particles with maximum efficiency, as there is a significant and uncontrollable loss of energy. For synchrotron light sources, this beam quality is required to detect the composition of matter, but synchrotron radiation is almost non-existent in linear accelerators, so current synchrotron radiation devices are ring-shaped.

In summary, linear accelerators rely on microwaves to accelerate particles, which are obtained from a microwave power source system and fed into the accelerating cavity by a waveguide transmission system, where the particles are initially accelerated and then injected into the ring accelerator for further acceleration. Alternatively, by cascading the accelerator tubes, the ring accelerator is not used and is directly accelerated to the required energy point.

The microwave power system is an important component of the linear accelerator. The energy required for the acceleration of electrons depends on the microwave power system, whose stability is related to the beam quality of the electron beam and ultimately affects the wavelength of the terahertz radiation as well as the output power.

In response to developments in technology and market demand, Wattsine has developed solid state microwave power sources (solid state microwave power amplifiers) specifically for the particle accelerator sector.

The microwave power amplifiers currently available in the market are mainly divided into electric vacuum power devices and semiconductor power devices, while the solid-state microwave amplifiers are semiconductor power devices.

In particle accelerator applications, the advantages of all-solid-state microwave power amplifiers over conventional electric vacuum power devices are as follows.

High Reliability -

All-solid-state microwave power amplifiers use a low-voltage power supply and multiple modules are combined, so damage to individual modules has less impact on the overall performance and is significantly more reliable than electric vacuum amplifiers.

High Stability

amplitude and phase of all-solid-state microwave power amplifiers are mainly affected by temperature after the amplifier operating state is determined, the suppression of power supply fluctuations is higher and less affected by power supply fluctuations, while temperature changes are slow-change processes that can be effectively controlled by low-level control systems.

Low maintenance costs -

All-solid-state microwave power amplifier modules are less expensive, less costly to repair when damaged, and have no high voltage and can be replaced on-line, in addition to having no lifetime devices and no need for backup of expensive electric vacuum tubes.

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