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--- life:what_s_an_accelerator [2025/06/26 12:40] – painter
+++ life:what_s_an_accelerator [2025/08/07 01:53] (current) – ryans
@@ Line 102: / Line 102: @@
 ====Vacuums====
+  *The whole beamline is kept under a pretty extreme vacuum, this is generally anywhere between e-8 Torr to e-12 Torr! There are many devices that we use to accomplish this, but here are a few of the main ones. Note also that a lot of them only work for a specific range of pressures.
+    - **Gate Valves**: Gate Valves are beamline devices that can portion off segments of the beamline any other space we intend to pump down on. Their primary responsibility is to contain any fluctuations in the vacuum pressure and stop them from propagating. There are also **Turbo** Gate Valves, which are distinct in their ability to close very quickly and rather violently, this can be greatly helpful to prevent total vacuum excursions in the case of a leak, but due to their extreme nature have a short shelf life and should be actuated as infrequently as possible.
+    - **Pirani Gauge**: These are measurement devices that work best for higher pressure spaces, you'll often see these reading nominal values of e-4 Torr. Their primary uses are for **roughing**, or pumping down on atmospheric or near atmospheric regions, or for the higher pressure **Insulating Vacuums**, which I'll cover next.
+    - **Roughing Pumps**: Scroll Pumps, Ion Pumps, Roughing Pumps, I'm sure I'm forgetting one, but generically these are pumps that are used for higher pressures, there are differences between them, but I'm no expert and it's all a bit more info than is really necessary for our role. Andy knows a lot about vacuums, feel free to ask him if things are quiet! These pumps reduce pressure, either to a desired point, or to a point where more powerful pumps can take over and further reduce pressure. I believe they stay on even after more powerful pumps are activated.
+    - **Cold Cathode Gauges**: CCG's are like Pirani Gauges, but work for much lower pressures, like those e-12 Torr areas I mentioned earlier. They do tend to turn themselves off when exposed to higher pressures so they don't break, so every now and again one will "trip off" due to those higher pressures despite being a diagnostic, or measurement, device.
+    - **Turbo Pumps**: What CCG's are to Pirani Gauges, Turbo Pumps are to Roughing Pumps. Once the PG's and Roughing Pumps give us a lower pressure environment, the CCG's and Turbo Pumps work to further reduce pressure from ~e-4 to something like e-10. They also can be harmed if they try to operate when pressure is too high, also an interesting thing to note is that for these lower pressures you don't get the outward flow of gas like you'd envision for atmospheric systems. Here the random travel of molecules within the vacuum matters greatly and the pump can't do much until one of them happens to cross its path. Like a cellular pump or a venus fly trap, it becomes a game of waiting, even if not for long.
+  * **Insulating Vacuums** are not vacuums we intend to send beam through, they're as the name suggests, a vacuum to limit the transfer of heat into some protected device. Air is a decent insulator, but an even better insulator is nothing, given that a vacuum is just an attempt at nothing the intent here becomes clear. These are not as great of vacuums as you'd find in the beamline, the marginal increase in insulation does not make up for the increase in complexity and power necessary to run a full turbopump set up, so they mostly stay in the e-4 Torr range. What kind of devices do they insulate? Great Question! Often these are our **Super Conducting Magnets** or **SCMs**. What are they? Well...
+====SCM vs Room Temp Magnets====
+  * **SCMs** not sure I know enough about this, where do i find more imll research
+  * Not all magnets are Super Conducting, a phenomenon that occurs when you make the magnet really really cold, if your professor ever made a cold magnet run around a track like f zero then this is the same concept. This requires cryogenic support to super cool and has a different department to work on. The only time we really need to care about if a magnet is super conducting or not is if something happens to it, then the alarm should tell you if it's superconducting or room temperature.
 ====Rest of LINAC====
 honestly very boring after that.
+====Target====
+  *We made it! The target is made out of something and at higher beam powers we need to spin it to prevent overheating. You may also recognize it from the display, where it should look rainbowy, very cool!
+  *Of the two tasks the involve the target, the easier one is working with Matthias Steiner to measure the thickness of the Target. You can read more about that __here__, as the more interesting aspects are purely documentation and safety.
+  *We can also start or stop the target, nominally it runs at 500 rpm. It must be stopped on occasion, such as when the remote handling group needs to do their work. That process is explained __here__.
+====The End(?)====
+  * I really wish it was, but this isn't even the end of the ftc network. This is a long page and it covers a lot of information, really most of what you need to know regarding the devices in the beamline upto the target. However there is more, which can be found in __What is an Accelerator II__. See you there when you're ready.
+OTHER IDEAS
+   *wedges
+   *dccts
+   *target and ARIS specifics
+   *idk shane 2 add stuff