Laser-Ion Acceleration

Exercise 1 – Cyclotron

Week 1 · discussed in the tutorial session · submit solutions by e-mail as agreed in class

Read the original cyclotron paper: Lawrence, E. O. & Livingston, M. S., The Production of High Speed Light Ions Without the Use of High Voltages, Phys. Rev. 40, 19–35 (1932), doi:10.1103/PhysRev.40.19.

  1. Recapture the central idea of the cyclotron in your own words.
  2. Calculate (or extract from the paper) the cyclotron frequency for the configuration described there.
  3. Compare the cyclotron frequency with the frequency of the driving high voltage.
  4. Describe the ion-bunch structure that emerges from the cyclotron.
  5. Calculate the cyclotron frequency as a function of kinetic energy, including relativistic effects, and plot this function with Python (or another tool of your choice).

Optional interactive support: cyclotron simulator (Lecture 2).