accelerator

An accelerator is a device, process, or substance that increases the rate of a change, such as motion, energy, or a chemical reaction. In everyday language it can refer to the accelerator pedal in a vehicle, which governs engine throttle and speed, as well as to scientific devices that increase the speed of particles or signals.

In physics, a particle accelerator uses electromagnetic fields to increase the kinetic energy of charged particles. Linear accelerators accelerate particles in a straight line, while circular accelerators such as cyclotrons and synchrotrons guide particles around a ring. These machines enable high-energy experiments to probe fundamental forces, study matter at small scales, and produce secondary particles for medical and industrial use. Large facilities like the Large Hadron Collider are circular accelerators; dedicated medical accelerators produce protons or electrons for cancer therapy and for producing isotopes used in imaging.

Beyond fundamental research, accelerators have broad applications in technology and industry. Hardware accelerators are specialized computing devices, such as graphics processing units (GPUs) or tensor processing units (TPUs), designed to perform particular tasks more efficiently than general-purpose processors. In automotive engineering, the accelerator pedal modulates engine power to control speed. In chemistry and materials science, accelerators can denote substances that increase reaction rates or curing processes; for example, chemical accelerators are used to speed vulcanization of rubber and other polymer processes.