Concept Map

Detailed Syllabus

The course is structured as follows. Unit I motivates the need for accelerators and provides an integrated overview of accelerator systems. Unit II is mainly concerned with charged particle beam dynamics and transport in an accelerator system. Units III and IV cover many advanced topics in accelerators and their applications, intended to give students as wide a sampling of the field as possible.

Unit 1: Introduction and Survey (11 L + 4 T)

(A) What is an accelerator? What is a beam? Classification of accelerators (DC & RF; linear & circular; lepton & hadron; NC & SC); Historical review of accelerators (van de Graaff, pelletron, cyclotron, linac, synchrotron, colliders - with examples, including a brief account of Mega accelerator facilities: LHC, RHIC, J-Parc).

(B) Typical components of an accelerator: Electron & ion sources, magnets for bending and focusing, RF cavities for acceleration; vacuum systems; beam diagnostics (current, position); brief overview of other essential systems (power supplies, cooling, cryogenics, radiation safety).

Unit 2: Beam dynamics (11 L + 4T)

(A) Transverse dynamics: Brief review of relativistic formulae; Charged particle motion in static electric and magnetic fields; Accelerator coordinates; Dipole and Quadrupole Magnets; Principle of strong focusing; Hills equation and solution; Betatron oscillations; Twiss parameters; Phase space and emittance; Matrix formulation; Tune point and resonances; Dispersion.

(B) Longitudinal dynamics: Electromagnetic fields in cylindrical cavities, Q of a cavity; shunt impedance; transit-time factor; multi-cell cavities; synchrotron oscillations and phase stability; principle of phase stability; Hamiltonian approach and phase-space bucket; adiabatic damping and longitudinal emittance.

Unit 3: Advanced topics in accelerators (11 L + 4 T)

(A) High intensity proton accelerators: Beam optics of a simple Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) beamline, effect of space-charge on beam dynamics, Radio-Frequency Quadrupoles (RFQs) - function, two-term potential, construction; need for superconducting cavities; design considerations for s/c cavities and cryogenic system; low and high beta cavities; higher-order modes. Beam bunching and buncher design considerations

(B) Photon sources: Radiation from moving charges; Lienard-Wiechert potentials, fields; Larmor formula; synchrotron radiation; wiggler and undulator radiation; synchrotron radiation sources; free-electron lasers (FELs); Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) FELs as X-ray lasers.

Unit 4: Further advanced topics and Applications (12 L + 3 T)

(A) Plasma-based accelerators: Limitations of RF accelerators; linear plasma waves; laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) - basic concept, ponderomotive force, laser guiding in a plasma, wavebreaking and bubble formation; quasi-monoenergetic electron acceleration in the bubble; diffraction, dephasing and depletion lengths, injection mechanisms, Overview of plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA); prospects and limitations of plasma-based accelerators.

(B) Applications of accelerators: Low-energy accelerators for industrial and medical applications; medium-energy accelerators for nuclear physics (including RIB), synchrotron radiation, materials science, spallation neutron sources, ADS; high-energy accelerators for particle physics.

(C) Visits to TIFR and/or BARC(taken as 4 lecture hours of the syllabus)