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https://www.nist.gov/history/radiation-physics-building/facilities/linac

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NIST History

## Radiation Physics Building

-  Staff  Expand or Collapse    -  Martin Berger 
  -  Randall S. Caswell 
  -  Louis Costrell 
  -  Margaret Ehrlich 
  -  Evans V. Hayward 
  -  Raymond W. Hayward 
  -  John Hubbell 
  -  Herman William Koch 
  -  James E. Leiss 
  -  Robert Loevinger 
  -  Robert Madden 
  -  Wilfrid B. Mann 
  -  William L. McLaughlin 
  -  Joseph W. Motz 
  -  Harold Wyckoff 
-  Facilities  Expand or Collapse    -  Cobalt-60 Pool Source 
  -  Isotope Separator Laboratory Facility 
  -  Linac 
  -  Mammographic X-Ray Facility 
  -  Manganese Bath Facility 
  -  Positive-Ion Van de Graaff Accelerator 
  -  Radon Calibration Facility 
  -  Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility 
  -  The Curiously Colorful Wall of NIST's Radiation Physics Building 
  -  Construction 
-  Research Highlights  Expand or Collapse    -  External Beam Radiotherapy 
  -  Hazards From Radioactivity in the Environment 
  -  Neutron Spin Filters 
  -  Nuclear Medicine 
  -  Nuclear Theory and Radiation Data 
  -  Radiation Detection Standards for Homeland Security 
-  Modernization 
-  Colloquium Talk 
-  Credits 

# Linac

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A linear accelerator, or “linac,” is basically a long hollow pipe, depleted of nearly all its air, through which electrons are accelerated on the crest of a traveling radio-frequency wave. By using a moving electromagnetic field to accelerate the electrons, the linac achieves a high-energy electron beam without the need for excessively high electrical voltages.

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When it went into operation in 1965 within Building 245 on the newly built campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the linac produced one of the world's most intense high-energy electron beams. Emerging from the end of the accelerator, this well-defined beam was then controlled by magnetic fields so it could interact directly with various materials or strike certain targets to generate other radiation, such as X-rays, positrons and neutrons. Beams of these radiations could be used in a variety of experiments in nuclear physics.
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The linac design stressed stability, a small spread of electron energies, and other high-quality beam characteristics. 

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Credit:

Over a period of nearly two decades, the research program at the linac contributed to fundamental nuclear physics with a well-coordinated collaboration between theorists, experimentalists and database developers. Its ability to produce a high-intensity beam of neutrons made the linac a major user facility for university-based nuclear physics research. Experiments using the accelerator included measurements of a variety of neutron properties and light-induced nuclear reactions.  

It was decommissioned in the 1980s.

PhysicsRadiation

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