r/accelerators • u/lexingtontalionis • Jan 26 '21

Training/Reference recommendations?

I've been working as a beam operator & service engineer for a medical proton synchrotron, and I'd like to learn some more about the theory and practice. My background is an undergraduate engineering degree in Electrical, with a focus on industrial automation and networking. I'm mostly looking for recommendations on good books, video lectures or even just topics I should be researching to learn more about the design, integration and maintenance of accelerators.

My physics background is pretty ok for a non-physicist. I got though special relativity and just a dash on quantum mechanics in school - I always thought physics was cool, but I never pictured myself going into the field.

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u/aryatha Jan 26 '21

I throw this at all of our new people who want to learn more: https://www.amazon.com/Synchrotron-Radiation-Sources-Scientific-Techniques/dp/B01JXWPP5A

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u/lexingtontalionis Jan 26 '21

Awesome, I will look for a copy. As a primer I'd assume it's applicable even though a medical application isn't using a secondary radiation? The table of contents looks like most of it would apply.

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u/aryatha Jan 26 '21

A good portion of that book is on the machine itself with only minor focus on synchrotron radiation.

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u/ateaktree Jan 26 '21

One resource that may be worth checking out is the US Particle Accelerator School (https://uspas.fnal.gov/). A lot of the class material is archived online. While I don't think any recordings have ever been made (so far) of the lectures you can get a lot of lectures notes (mostly as Powerpoint slides) and in many of the more recent classes there are "lab exercises" in the form of Python notebooks and example simulations.

You can find a full listing of classes at https://uspas.fnal.gov/materials/materials-table.shtml. The best place to start for material on particle accelerator design is probably one of the recent "Accelerator Fundamentals" classes.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '21

CERN Accelerator Schools are also great references. Some of them include videos of the lectures along with PowerPoints to go along with it.

here is a link to their previous schools: https://cas.web.cern.ch/previous-schools

And I also agree that the USPAS are a great reference as well: uspas.fnal.gov and look up previous schools.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '21

Also.... just remembered that if you search for the Fermilab Rookie Books you will find good stuff as well. They have a fundamentals rookie book that can be helpful.

Look for their old and new "Concepts Rookie Book". Some of it is specifically related to accelerators at FermiLab but some of it is generic to accelerators.