Electrostatic nuclear accelerator

An electrostatic nuclear accelerator is one of the two main types of particle accelerators, where charged particles can be accelerated by subjection to a static high voltage potential. The static high voltage method is contrasted with the dynamic fields used in oscillating field particle accelerators. Owing to their simpler design, historically these accelerators were developed earlier. These machines are operated at lower energy than some larger oscillating field accelerators, and to the extent that the energy regime scales with the cost of these machines, in broad terms these machines are less expensive than higher energy machines, and as such they are much more common. Many universities worldwide have electrostatic accelerators for research purposes.

Although these machines accelerate atomic nuclei, the scope of application is not limited to the nuclear sciences of nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics and nuclear chemistry. Indeed, those applications are outweighed by other uses of nuclear beams. Of the approximately 26,000 accelerators worldwide, ~44% are for radiotherapy, ~41% for ion implantation, ~9% for industrial processing and research, ~4% for biomedical and other low-energy research (less than 1% are higher energy machines).

These accelerators are being used for nuclear medicine in medical physics, sample analysis using techniques such as PIXE in the material sciences, depth profiling in solid state physics, and to a lesser extent secondary ion mass spectrometry in geologic and cosmochemical works, and even neutron beams can be made from the charged particles emerging from these accelerators to perform neutron crystallography in condensed matter physics. The principles used in electrostatic nuclear accelerators could be used to accelerate any charged particles, but particle physics operates at much higher energy regimes than these machines can achieve, and there are various better methods suited for making electron beams, so these accelerators are used for accelerating nuclei.

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