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Advantages and disadvantages of

a Cyclotron

MADE BY AKSHAY
BORA
 One of the earliest and the simplest accelerators is a cyclotron. The essential design
idea of the cyclotron was conceived by Ernest Lawrence at the University of California
at Berkeley in 1929 and was developed in the year 1932. Received Noble Prize in the
year 1939 for this invention.

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In essence, it is a device in which the beam of particles makes a few

hundreds of cycles through the device, receiving a small voltage
increment in each orbit until the particle energy reaches the order of MeV.
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In principle, a cyclotron uses both electric field and magnetic field and they both
are put perpendicular to each other. These fields make the particle go in a spiral
path, and in the process increasing its energy and speed.
 For the nonrelativistic particles, the centripetal force Fc required to keep them in their curved path is :

This essential force is provided by the Lorentz Force of the magnetic field B:

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The particle would reach the maximum energy when it reaches the periphery of the dees:
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The output energy of the particles is:

In addition to this, in order to achieve the desired result from a cyclotron the potential must be
varied with some frequency and that frequency is known as cyclotron resonance frequency.
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Study of EM Waves

Nuclear Physics

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Treatment of Cancer

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Cyclotron used in Radiation Theory

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Study of EM Waves:

The particle that comes out of cyclotron is charged and accelerated, thus fulfilling the
condition to radiate electromagnetic waves. Any particle that leaves the cyclotron emits a

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radiation also known as cyclotron radiation.

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Nuclear Physics:

Cyclotrons can used to accelerate the charge particles to a very high speed to study the

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nuclei.Before the invention of other powerful particle cyclotrons were used heavily to study
nuclear physics. However, today the scientific community prefers other nuclear accelerators
to it.

The high energy particle can then be used for various purposes.
Until 1950s the cyclotrons were the most powerful particle accelerator technology until the
invention of synchrotron.
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Treatment of Cancer:

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A cyclotron can also be used to treat cancer. Cancer can be treated if we are able to
remove the cancer cells from the body. This is achieved by using high speed ion beam
that can penetrate the human body and can kill the tumour and cancer cells in the
human body. This is done while taking care that the living cells are damaged as least as
possible. Thus, using cyclotron can be used to treated to cure cancer. This is popularly
known as Photon Therapy.
There are about 1500 cyclotrons currently in use in nuclear medicine worldwide for the
production of radionuclides.
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•Cyclotron cannot accelerate electrons because electrons are of very small mass, and the
would reach the relativistic domain easily and then we have to modify the cyclotron to

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continue accelerating it.

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•A cyclotron cannot be used to accelerate neutral particles, since it use the property of
charge particle to experience the magnetic and electric field.

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•It cannot accelerate positively charged particles with large mass due to the relativistic
effect.
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•Using a basic cyclotron we can only attain 40MeV proton energy at
maximum with for energy any greater than that we have to find the
alternative ways, we may use a modified version of cyclotron which is

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synchrocyclotron. It is a frequency modulated cyclotron.

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•We are using the magnetic field lines to make the particles go in the circular orbits. But the field

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lines are not perfectly perpendicular to the dees, resulting in unwanted effects.

•To get more energy the cyclotron needs to have a larger radius and thus larger magnets, this
would affect the overall cost of the accelerator and thus not suitable. Thus we use alternatives as
Synchrotron.
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