Particle Accelerator Controls

Particle accelerators and free electron lasers are being used to generate high energy charged particle beams and monochromatic light sources from infrared to deep ultraviolet regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. While particle accelerators have traditionally been the tools-of-the-trade of high energy physicists, free electron lasers are finding increased applications in industrial materials processing such as polymer and metal surface processing, metal and ceramic surface micromachining, semiconductor surface preparation.

Superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities are devices inside these accelerators that are used to bring the charged particles to required high energy and high speed. Energen, Inc. has designed, built and demonstrated both slow and fast tuner mechanisms that control the resonant frequency of SRF cavities. These tuners, based on our magnetostrictive actuators and linear motor work by physically changing the shape of the SRF cavity with nanometer precision, thereby

increasing the efficiency of the acceleration and eliminating the effects of vibrations on the cavity performance.

Energen currently has actuators in beta test at three laboratories known internationally for their innovation in new accelerator designs. While the number of such machines being built is small, each accelerator requires hundreds to thousands of tuners throughout the machine.