By Ken Takayama and Richard Briggs (eds.)
Springer
Hardback: €126.55 £108 $169
Of the nearly 30,000 particle accelerators now operating worldwide, few types are as unfamiliar to most physicists and engineers as induction accelerators. This class of machine is likewise poorly represented in technical monographs. Induction Accelerators, a volume of 12 essays by well known experts, forms a structured exposition of the basic principles and functions of major technical systems of induction accelerators. The editors have arranged the essays in the logical progression of chapters in a textbook. Nonetheless, each has been written to be useful as a stand-alone text.
Apart from the two chapters about induction synchrotrons, the book is very much the product of the “Livermore/Berkeley school” of technology of induction linear accelerators (linacs) started by Nicholas Christofilos and led for many years by Richard Briggs as the Beam Research Program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The chapters by Briggs and his colleagues John Barnard, Louis Reginato and Glen Westenskow are masterful expositions marked by the clarity of analysis and physics motivation that have been the hallmarks of the Livermore/Berkeley school. A prime example is the presentation of the principles of induction accelerators that, despite its brevity, forms an indispensable introduction by the master in the field to a discussion (together with Reginato) of the many trade-offs in designing induction cells.
One application of induction technology made important by affordable, solid-state power electronics and high-quality, amorphous magnetic materials is the induction-based modulator. This application grew from early investigations of magnetic switching by Daniel Birx and his collaborators; it is well described by Edward G Cook and Eiki Hotta in the context of a more general discussion of high-power switches and power-compression techniques.
Invented as low-impedance, multistage accelerators of high-current electron beams, induction machines have always had the central challenge of controlling beam instabilities and other maladies that can spoil the quality of the beam. Such issues have been the focus of the major scientific contribution of George Caporaso and Yu-Jiuan Chen, who – in the most mathematical chapter of the book – discuss beam dynamics, the control of beam break-up instability and the suppression of emittance growth resulting from the combination of misalignment and chromatic effects in the beam transport.
In ion induction linacs proposed for use as inertial-fusion energy drivers, an additional class of instabilities is possible, namely, unstable longitudinal space–charge waves. These instabilities are analysed in a chapter by Barnard and Kazuhiko Horioka titled “Ion Induction Linacs”. It is followed by a description of the applications of ion linacs, especially to heavy-ion-driven inertial fusion and high-energy density research. These chapters contain the most extensive bibliographies of the book.
The use of induction devices in a synchrotron configuration was studied at Livermore and at Pulsed Sciences Inc in the late 1980s. However, it was not until the proof-of-concept experiment by Takayama and his colleagues at KEK, who separated the functions of acceleration and longitudinal focusing, that applications of induction accelerators to producing long bunches (super-bunches) in relativistic-ion accelerators became a possibility for an eventual very large hadron collider. These devices and their potential applications are described in the final chapters of the book.
Both physicists and engineers will find the papers in Induction Accelerators well written with ample – though not exhaustive – bibliographies. While the volume is not a textbook, it could profitably be used as associated reading in a course about accelerator science and technology. Induction Accelerators fills a void in the formal literature on accelerators. It is a tribute to Nicholas Christofilos and Daniel Birx, the two brilliant technical physicists, to whom this volume is dedicated. I recommend it highly.
