WHY CYCLOTRON CANNOT ACCELERATE ELECTRONS AND NEUTRONS?/PHYSICS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CYCLOTRON

The cyclotron was one of the earliest types of particle accelerators and is still used as the first stage of some large multi-stage particle accelerators.

Cyclotron consists of two metallic hollow cylinders which are called dees. An alternating voltage is applied between the two dees and also a cross magnetic field is applied.

CYCLOTRON-IMAGE

WHY CYCLOTRON CANNOT ACCELERATE ELECTRONS ?

Electrons are so light that they get high speed soon and then their mass starts changing according to relativity theory.This starts disturbing the oscillator frequency which alternately changes the polarity of dees and accelerates the charged particles.

• Mass of the electron is less
• Speed will increase due to its low mass;
• At high speed there will be a change in mass according to Einsteins theory of relativity.
• This will alter the frequency condition
• The frequency may not match and is said to be out of resonance condition.

WHY CYCLOTRON CANNOT ACCELERATE NEUTRONS ?

Cyclotron is a device used to accelerate charged particles.Cyclotron works on the principle that a charged particle moving normal to a magnetic field experiences magnetic Lorentz force due to which the particle moves in a circular path and hence accelerates it.

Since a neutron is neutral by charge so that a cyclotron cannot accelerate it and due to the net zero charge on a neutron it cannot be so easily accelerated by any method.

CONCLUSION

Cyclotron is a particle accelerator most suitably used to accelerate positively charged particles like proton, deutrons ,alpha particles etc., but not the electrons and neutrons.Main reason for the electron is due to their change in mass at higher velocity and for neutrons it is due to its neutral charge.Did you check the mass of an electron by any experiment?