The first edition of Engines of Discovery celebrated in words, images and anecdotes the accelerators and their constructors that culminated in the discovery of the Higgs boson. But even before the Higgs was discovered, before the champagne corks popped and while the television producers brushed up their quantum mechanics, a new wave of enthusiasm for accelerators to be applied for more practical purposes was gaining momentum. Almost all fields of human endeavour will be enhanced by this trend: energy conservation, medical diagnostics and treatment, national security, as well as industrial processing. Accelerators have been used most spectacularly to reveal the structure of the complex molecules that determine our metabolism and life. For every accelerator chasing the Higgs, there are now ten thousand serving other purposes. It is high time to move from abstract mathematics and philosophy to the practical needs of humankind. It is the aim of this revised and expanded edition to describe this revolution in a manner which will attract the young, not only to apply their curiosity to the building blocks of matter but to help them contribute to the improvement of the quality of life itself on this planet. As always, the authors have tried to avoid lengthy mathematical description. In describing a field which reaches out to almost all of today's cutting edge technology, some detailed explanation cannot be avoided but this has been confined to sidebars. References guide experts to move on to the journal Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technology and other publications for more information. But first we would urge every young physicist, teacher, journalist and politician to read this book. Contents: Electrostatic Accelerators; Cyclotrons; Linear Accelerators; Betatrons; Synchrotrons; Colliders; Neutrino Super Beams, Neutrino Factories and Muon Colliders; Detectors; High-Energy and Nuclear Physics; Synchrotron Radiation Sources; Isotope Production and Cancer Therapy Accelerators; Spallation Neutron Sources; Accelerators in Industry and Elsewhere; National Security; Energy and the Environment; A Final Word OCo Mainly to the Young. Readership: Scientists, research physicists, engineers and administrators at accelerator laboratories; general readers; undergraduates and graduates in physics, electrical engineering and the history of science."

This book takes the readers through the science behind particle accelerators, colliders and detectors: the physics principles that each stage of the development of particle accelerators helped to reveal, and the particles they helped to discover. The book culminates with a description of the Large Hadron Collider, one of the world’s largest and most complex machines operating in a 27-km circumference tunnel near Geneva. The book provides the material honestly without misrepresenting the science for the sake of excitement or glossing over difficult notions. The principles behind each type of accelerator is made accessible to the undergraduate student and even to a lay reader with cartoons, illustrations and metaphors. Simultaneously, the book also caters to different levels of reader’s background and provides additional materials for the more interested or diligent reader.

This book gives an overview of present and future particle accelerator experiments, and also of astroparticle physics experiments. Relevant physics is discussed in detail in theoretical contributions.

Particle accelerators have enabled forefront research in high energy physics and other research areas for more than half a century. Accelerators have directly contributed to 26 Nobel Prizes in Physics since 1939 as well as another 20 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Medicine and Physics with X-rays. Although high energy physics has been the main driving force for the development of the particle accelerators, accelerator facilities have continually been expanding applications in many areas of research and technology. For instance, active areas of accelerator applications include radiotherapy to treat cancer, production of short-lived medical isotopes, synchrotron light sources, free-electron lasers, beam lithography for microcircuits, thin-film technology and radiation processing of food. Currently, the largest and most powerful accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, which accelerates protons to multi-TeV energies in a 27 km high-vacuum ring. To go beyond the maximum capabilities of the LHC, the next generation of circular and linear particle colliders under consideration, based on radiofrequency acceleration, will require multi-billion investment, kilometric infrastructure and massive power consumption. These factors pose serious challenges in an increasingly resource-limited world. Therefore, it is important to look for alternative and sustainable acceleration techniques. This chapter pays special attention to novel accelerator techniques to overcome present acceleration limitations towards more compact and cost-effective long-term future accelerators.