Gamma‐Ray Colliders and Muon Colliders

MAR 01, 1998

High‐energy physicists have learned much from colliders with beams of protons, antiprotons, electrons and positrons. Now it seems both feasible and useful to build gamma‐gamma and muon‐muon colliders.

DOI: 10.1063/1.882185

Andrew M. Sessler

The physics of beams is a discipline that has developed over the last 70 years, concerning itself with the manipulation and acceleration of beams of particles and light. Starting with electrostatic accelerators and advancing through cyclotrons and synchrotrons, this science has become ever more sophisticated. Nuclear physics exploits it nowadays in devices such as the continuous‐beam superconducting electron accelerator at the Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory in Virginia, the ASTRID cooler ring at Aarhus University in Denmark and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider nearing completion at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The modern physics of beams has also made possible the dozens of synchrotron light sources that are currently making significant contributions to physics, chemistry and biology in many countries.

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More about the Authors

Andrew M. Sessler. Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.