Accelerators

An accelerator is a device that increases the energy or speed of charged particles, and, more broadly, a system that speeds up a process in computing or electronics. Particle accelerators are the most widely known type, used for science, medicine, and industry. They are categorized as linear accelerators (linacs), which impart energy in a straight line, and circular accelerators, where particles circulate in a ring and gain energy with each pass. Early machines such as the cyclotron and the betatron were followed by modern facilities that use radiofrequency cavities to provide accelerating fields and magnets to steer and focus beams. In circular accelerators, beams are confined and steered by strong magnetic fields, and energy is added repeatedly.

Applications include fundamental research in high-energy physics at facilities like the Large Hadron Collider, as well as the production of medical isotopes and radiation therapy for cancer. Synchrotron light sources generate bright X-ray beams for materials science and biology. In industry, accelerators are used for materials processing, sterilization, and semiconductor manufacturing. Advances in superconducting magnets and beam optics have increased performance and efficiency.

In computing, accelerator hardware refers to devices designed to speed specific tasks. Graphics processing units (GPUs), tensor processing units, digital signal processors, and field-programmable gate arrays accelerate workloads such as graphics rendering, artificial intelligence, and data analysis. These accelerators emphasize parallelism and energy efficiency.

The field has origins in the early 20th century and has evolved into a core part of science, medicine, and technology, with ongoing research to reach higher energies, brighter beams, and more capable computational accelerators.