New Brookhaven Accelerator

The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission has approved design and construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory of an ultra‐high‐energy particle accelerator for nuclear research. The new machine, an alternating gradient synchrotron, will be designed to produce beams of protons of energies ranging up to 25 billion electron volts. The synchrotron will use a series of alternate strongly converging and diverging magnetic fields to confine a proton beam in a tube of relatively small cross section. This focussing effect allows the production of high‐energy beams with smaller electromagnets and related equipment than would otherwise be possible.