The Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) is a
particle accelerator
A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Small accelerators are used for fundamental ...
located at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory in
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...
,
New York, United States.
The Alternating Gradient Synchrotron was built on the innovative concept of the alternating gradient, or
strong-focusing principle, developed by Brookhaven physicists. This new concept in accelerator design allowed scientists to accelerate
proton
A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , Hydron (chemistry), H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' (elementary charge). Its mass is slightly less than the mass of a neutron and approximately times the mass of an e ...
s to energies that were previously unachievable. The AGS became the world's premiere accelerator when it reached its design energy of 33 billion electron volts (GeV) on July 29, 1960.
Until 1968, the AGS was the highest energy accelerator in the world, slightly higher than its 28 GeV sister machine, the
Proton Synchrotron at
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...
, the European laboratory for high-energy physics. While 21st century accelerators can reach energies in the trillion electron volt region, the AGS earned researchers three
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...
s and today serves as the injector for Brookhaven's
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC ) is the first and one of only two operating heavy- ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, and used ...
; it remains the world's highest intensity high-energy proton accelerator.
The AGS Booster, constructed in 1991, further augments the capabilities of the AGS, enabling it to accelerate more intense
proton beams and heavy ions such as
Gold
Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...
. Brookhaven's
linear particle accelerator
A linear particle accelerator (often shortened to linac) is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of Oscillation, oscillating electric potentials along ...
(LINAC) provides 200 million electron volt (MeV) protons to the AGS Booster, and the Electron Beam Ion Source (EBIS) and
Tandem Van de Graaff accelerators provide other ions to the AGS Booster. The AGS Booster then accelerates these particles for injection into the AGS. The AGS Booster also provides particle beams to the
NASA Space Radiation Laboratory.
Importance of alternate-gradient focusing
Nobel Prizes
The work performed at the accelerator led to three
Nobel Prizes in Physics:
*1976:
Samuel C. C. Ting discovered the ''J'' part of the
''J''/ψ and the
charm quark
The charm quark, charmed quark, or c quark is an elementary particle found in composite subatomic particles called hadrons such as the J/psi meson and the charmed baryons created in particle accelerator collisions. Several bosons, including th ...
.
*1980:
James Cronin and
Val Fitch discovered
CP violation by experimenting with
Kaons.
*1988:
Leon Lederman,
Melvin Schwartz and
Jack Steinberger discovered the
muon neutrino
The muon neutrino is an elementary particle which has the symbol and zero electric charge. Together with the muon it forms the second generation of leptons, hence the name muon neutrino. It was discovered in 1962 by Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwa ...
.
See also
*
Strong focusing (also known as alternating-gradient focusing — an idea pioneered on this accelerator)
References
Further reading
*
External links
Brookhaven National Laboratory: Alternating Gradient Synchrotron web page*
{{neutrino detectors
Particle physics facilities
Brookhaven National Laboratory