Amity INDIAN MILITARY COLLEGE

PROJECT ON CYCLOTRON

By: Nabhdeep Choudhary

Roll No:

Certificate
This is to certify that Nabhdeep Choudhary,
student of Class XII, Amity Indian Military College,
has completed the project titled Cyclotron during
the academic year 2014-2015 towards partial
fulfillment of credit for the Physics practical
evaluation of CBSE 2015, and submitted
satisfactory report, as compiled in the following
pages, under my supervision.

_________________
Department of Physics
Amity Indian Military College

Acknowledgement
s
"There are times when silence speaks so
much more loudly than words of praise to
only as good as belittle a person, whose
words do not express, but only put a veneer
over true feelings, which are of gratitude at
this point of time."

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to

my physics mentor for his vital support,
guidance and encouragement, without which
this project would not have come forth. I
would also like to express my gratitude to the
staff of the Department of Physics at Amity
Indian Military College for their support during
the making of this project.

INTRODUCTION:
A cyclotron is a machine Used to accelerate
charged particles to high energies. The first
cyclotron was built by Ernest Orlando
Lawrence and his graduate student, M.
Stanley Livingston, at the University of
California, Berkley, in the early 1930's.
A cyclotron consists of two D-shaped cavities
sandwiched between two electromagnets. A
radioactive source is placed in the center of
the cyclotron and the electromagnets are
turned on. The radioactive source emits
charged particles. It just so happens that a
magnetic field can bend the path of a charged
particle so, if everything is just right, the
charged particle will circle around inside the
D-shaped cavities. However, this doesn't
accelerate the particle. In order to do that, the
two D-shaped cavities have to be hooked up
to a radio wave generator. This generator
gives one cavity a positive charge and the
other cavity a negative charge. After a

moment, the radio wave generator switches

the charges on the cavities. The charges keep
switching back and forth as long as the radio
wave generator is on. It is this switching of
charges that accelerates the particle.
Let's say that we have an alpha particle inside
our cyclotron. Alpha particles have a charge
of +2, so their paths can bent by magnetic
fields. As an alpha particle goes around the
cyclotron, it crosses the gap between the two
D-shaped cavities. If the charge on the cavity
in front of the alpha particle is negative and
the charge on the cavity in back of it is
positive, the alpha particle is pulled forward
(remember that opposite charges attract
while like charges repel). This just accelerated
the alpha particle! The particle travels
through one cavity and again comes to the
gap. With luck, the radio wave generator has
changed the charges on the cavities in time,
so the alpha particle once again sees a
negative charge in front of it and a positive
charge in back of it and is again pulled

forward. As long as the timing is right, the

alpha particle will always see a negative
charge in front of it and a positive charge in
back of it when it crosses the gap between
cavities. This is how a cyclotron accelerates
particles!
A cyclotron consists of two D-shaped regions
known as Dee's. In each dee there is a
magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of
the page. In the gap separating the dees
there is a uniform electric field pointing from
one dee to the other. When a charge is
released from rest in the gap it is accelerated
by the electric field and carried into one of the
dees. The magnetic field in the dee causes
the charge to follow a half-circle that carries it
back to the gap.
While the charge is in the dee the electric
field in the gap is reversed, so the charge is
once again accelerated across the gap. The
cycle continues with the magnetic field in the
dees continually bringing the charge back to
the gap. Every time the charge crosses the

gap it picks up speed. This causes the halfcircles in the dees to increase in radius, and
eventually the charge emerges from the
cyclotron at high speed

Definition of Cyclotron
A circular particle accelerator in which
charged subatomic particles generated at a
central source are accelerated spirally
outward in a plane perpendicular to a fixed
magnetic field by an alternating electric field.
A cyclotron is capable of generating particle
energies between a few million and several
tens of millions of electron volts.

PRINCIPLE OF CYCLOTRON :
It is based on the principle that a positive ion
can acquire sufficiently large energy with a
comparatively smaller alternating potential
difference by making them to cross the same
electric field time and again by making use of

a strong magnetic field.

How the cyclotron works

In the cyclotron, a high-frequency alternating

voltage applied across the "D" electrodes
(also called "dees") alternately attracts and
repels
charged particles. The particles, injected near
the center of the magnetic
field, accelerate only when passing through
the gap between the electrodes. The
perpendicular magnetic field (passing
vertically through the "D" electrodes),
combined with the increasing energy of the
particles forces the particles to travel in a
spiral path.
dees and so they are accelerated (at the
typical sub-relativistic speeds used) and will

increase in mass as they approach the speed

of light. Either of these effects (increased
velocity or increased mass) will increase the
radius of the circle and so the path will be a
spiral.
(The particles move in a spiral, because
a current of electrons or ions, flowing
perpendicular to a magnetic field, experiences
a force perpendicular to its direction of
motion. The charged particles move freely in
a vacuum, so the particles follow a spiral
path.)
The radius will increase until the particles hit
a target at the perimeter of the vacuum
chamber. Various materials may be used for
the target, and the collisions will create
secondary particles which may be guided
outside of the cyclotron and into instruments
for analysis. The results will enable the
calculation of various properties, such as the
mean spacing between atoms and the
creation of various collision products.
Subsequent chemical and particle analysis of

the target material may give insight

into nuclear transmutation of the elements
used in the target.

Cyclotron radiation
Cyclotron radiation is electromagnetic
radiation emitted by moving charge d
particles deflected by a magnetic field. The
Lorentz force on the particles acts
perpendicular to both the magnetic field lines
and the particles' motion through them,
creating an acceleration of charged particles.

FUNCTIONS:
Cyclotrons have a single electrical driver,
which saves both money and power, since
more expense may be allocated to increasing

efficiency.
Cyclotrons produce a continuous stream of
particles at the target, so the average power
is relatively high.
The compactness of the device reduces other
costs, such as its foundations, radiation
shielding, and the enclosing building.

Advantages of the cyclotron:

Cyclotrons have a single electrical driver,
which saves both money and power, since
more expense may be allocated to increasing
efficiency.
Cyclotrons produce a continuous stream of
particles at the target, so the average power
is relatively high.
The compactness of the device reduces other
costs, such as its foundations, radiation
shielding, and the enclosing building.

Limitations of the cyclotron

The magnet portion of a 27" cyclotron. The
gray object is the upper pole piece, routing
the magnetic field in two loops through a
similar part below. The white canisters held
conductive coils to generate the magnetic
field. The D electrodes are contained in a
vacuum chamber that was inserted in the
central field gap.
The spiral path of the cyclotron beam can only
"sync up" with klystron-type (constant
frequency) voltage sources if the accelerated
particles are approximately obeying Newton's
Laws of Motion. If the particles become fast
enough that relativistic effects become
important, the beam gets out of phase with
the oscillating electric field, and cannot
receive any additional acceleration. The
cyclotron is therefore only capable of
accelerating particles up to a few percent of
the speed of light. To accommodate increased
mass the magnetic field may be modified by
appropriately shaping the pole pieces as in

the isochronous cyclotrons, operating in a

pulsed mode and changing the frequency
applied to the dees as in
the synchrocyclotrons, either of which is
limited by the diminishing cost effectiveness
of making larger machines. Cost limitations
have been overcome by employing the more
complex synchrotron or linear accelerator,
both of which have the advantage of
scalability, offering more power within an
improved cost structure as the machines are
made larger.

Use of the cyclotron

For several decades, cyclotrons were the best
source of high-energy beams for nuclear
physics experiments; several cyclotrons are
still in use for this type of research.

Cyclotrons can be used to treat cancer. Ion

beams from cyclotrons can be used, as
in proton therapy, to penetrate the body and
kill tumors by radiation damage, while
minimizing damage to healthy tissue along
their path.
Cyclotron beams can be used to bombard
other atoms to produce short-lived positronemitting isotopes suitable for PET imaging
There are basically two applications for the
cyclotron. It's a particle accelerator, and,
though it can be adapted to accelerate any
charged particle, it is most frequently applied
to accelerate positive charges. Protons are
frequently the choice. We use the cyclotron in
the physics lab, and in medicine.

In the medical area we are developing the

cyclotron as a proton treatment source. More
medical facilities are being set up with the
cyclotron providing accelerated protons to
irradiate tissue. The proton, unlike gamma
rays, has a depth of penetration that can be
finely tuned (by "tuning" the cyclotron) to
limit damage to other tissues.
The cyclotron is also used to create
radioactive materials that are used as
radiation sources which can be implanted.

The radioactive materials can also be used as

tracers in medical work ups and in research,
and also to provide "luminosity" in some
imaging because of the way tissue takes up
these selected materials. These mostly shortlived radionuclide's are "big business" in
medical and biophysics.
In the physics laboratory, we use the
cyclotron to create particle streams that we
then slam into targets. This is the
continuation of research to investigate the
quantum mechanical world. The cyclotron can
be used to "feed" another or other
accelerators to get higher energies and a
"bigger bang" in the world of collisions.

Bibliography
The data used in this project was taken from the
following sources:
www.google.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.scribd.com
Sears and Zemanskys University Physics

The End