Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Physics

Project Advisor 1

Antonios Kontos

Abstract/Artist's Statement

The first particle accelerators were developed by Ernest Lawrence at University of California, Berkeley nearly one hundred years ago. Lawrence’s creation of the cyclotron has had an everlasting impact on physics and his experiments can be recreated today. A cyclotron is a charged particle accelerator that uses a magnetic field to confine particles to a spiral flight path in a vacuum chamber and an applied electrical field accelerates these particles to high energies. In this senior thesis, I embarked on a journey to build a fully functional cyclotron that is capable of accelerating protons to beyond 60keV. The complexity of the project is extensive because each component in the project needs to be manufactured. The components that need to be made are the electric field generator, magnetic field generator, vacuum chamber/pump, ionization source, and particle detector. I was able to construct the cyclotron from scratch and get to the point of testing. This cyclotron will be used for future senior projects and experimental demonstrations in numerous physics classes.

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