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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

The particle accelerator that’s serious about recycling

Most linear accelerators are energy hogs, but a new model recovers waste energy that can be ploughed back into the system.
Linear particle accelerator housed in high-ceilinged laboratory.

The CBETA accelerator at Cornell University, New York, is designed to recoup the energy it pours into making high-energy electron beams. Credit: Cornell University

Linear accelerators excel at speeding up particles while keeping them in dense beams. But they are not paragons of efficiency: the energy used to spur on the particles is typically lost.

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Nature 584, 11 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02262-z

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