There is a lot of information on accelerators and types of accelerators available by going to the external links above. The text below mentions various types of accelerators, but with considerably less detail than can be found using the external links.
Some types of accelerators:
Cathode ray tubes are extensively used for television screens, computer monitors, and Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes. A cathode ray tube is an electron tube consisting of an anode, a cathode and a beam of electrons between them. The plate which emits electrons is called a cathode and the plate which receives electrons is called an anode. In a cathode ray tube electrons flow from the cathode to the anode. High voltage is applied to the cathode which emits an electron beam of low energy that strikes the phosphor screen, where it leaves a bright spot. To make some display on the screen, the electron beam is bent vertically and horizontally by using either electrostatic fields or magnetic fields.
Electrostatic accelerators
Charged particles are accelerated by a steady electric field, maintained by electrodes operating at successively increasing (or decreasing) potentials.
For example, an electron may gain energy as it moves through a set of co-axial electrode rings, each ring having a higher potential than the previous ring.
Goes in at low energy-> |||||||||||| -> comes out at higher energy.
Electrostatic accelerators suffer from voltage breakdown at sufficiently high electric fields. Accelerating with time-varying fields allows higher peak electric fields, but requires synchronization of the particle arrival time in the accelerator with the phase of the oscillating electric field. When using this kind of accelerator, the particles to be accelerated cannot travel in a continuous stream, but rather must come in bursts.
One of the earliest types of accelerators that did not push particles in a straight line was the cyclotron. E.O. Lawrence developed the cyclotron, and received a Nobel Prize for this in 1939. A typical cyclotron uses the magnetic force to bend particles around. The radius of this circular motion increases (causing the particles to spiral outward) due to an increase in particle energy, accomplished by periodic application of an electrical force.Check out the external links above to get a picture worth a thousand words.
Synchrotron light, which can be more intense than sunlight, is generated by bending electrons at very high speeds ( nearly up to speed of light) using powerful magnets. These light sources produce high intensity beams of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation and can be used for research purposes. The synchrotron light can be used to view many different materials, including living organisms like plants, animal tissue, and human tissue, at the cellular level with a greater clarity than other techniques. Synchrotron light can be used to determine the structure of proteins to help understand how they function within plants. Protein crystallography is a technique that uses synchrotron x-ray light to determine the three-dimensional structure of protein crystals.
A Free Electron Laser generates tunable, coherent, high power radiation, with wavelengths ranging from millimeter to visible and potentially ultraviolet to x-ray. A free electron laser consists of a beam of electrons of a certain energy which passes through a transverse magnetic field. This can be obtained by placing magnets with alternating poles along the direction of motion of the beam. When a beam consisting of electrons is bent along this path, photons are emitted. Adjusting either the beam energy (speed/energy of the electrons) or the field strength tunes the wavelength easily and rapidly over a wide range. Since the energy of the photons emitted is related to the energy of the electron beam and the bending magnetic field strength, an FEL can be tuned, i.e. the frequency can be controlled.
There are many laboratories where FELs are being used for scientific research and many are being developed for industrial purposes. Among these laboratories FLASH is the currently the only free-electron laser facility worldwide to produce radiation in the soft X-ray range. It thus plays an important role for future FEL facilities that will generate laser flashes of even shorter wavelengths with an X-ray free electron source (XFEL).