A brighter future for synchrocyclotrons?

On February 6, a group of physicists, accelerator specialists, and interested observers met in Williamsburg, Virginia, to discuss for two days the recent past and immediate future of that venerable accelerator, the synchrocyclotron. This conference on high‐energy cyclotron improvement, held at the College of William and Mary, was intended to provide opportunity for a pooling of information which might help determine the extent to which new experiments with 100–800‐MeV protons (and their secondary particles) will be possible in the next few years. In this “intermediate” energy region, the synchrocyclotron still reigns supreme, as it has since the Berkeley $184″$ machine first demonstrated the success of the phase‐stability principle of McMillan and Veksler in 1946. Few changes have been made in any of these machines since they were built, and “one _μamp” is still the standard guesstimate of internal proton currents for most of them. Recent events have caused a rustle of activity directed toward greater internal beams, more efficient extraction of protons, and more efficient utilization of secondary‐particle beams.