Theory and Design of Charged Particle Beams

Rating:
Summary: Ingenious methods
Review: Particle accelerators are well described in this book. One of their biggest objectives is to maximise the beam luminosity, so that when the beam is incident on another beam, or a target, the maximal number of reactions can happen. But the problem is that if the beam consists of charged particles, then these are usually of the same charge. Hence space charge effects can act to force the beam apart, either longitudinally or transversely. Neither is desirable.

Reiser describes many beam focusing techniques that have been developed over the decades to circumvent this problem. Quite impressive ingenuity. Some of the best experimental physicists have gone into this field, and their efforts are well summarised here.

Other non-accelerator applications are described. Though perhaps the most interesting to some of you have to be omitted by necessity. These are military applications, where particle beams might be used as antimissile defenses. (Star Wars.)