ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a short tour of a typical accelerator, moving along the beamline and making sense of the different kinds of accelerator elements. A first observation is that some accelerators are straight, in which the accelerated species pass through each element of the accelerator only once; often the predominant element is the one that performs the acceleration. The basic building blocks of any accelerator are: the devices that generate the particles; the devices that accelerate the particles, which is almost always done with electric fields; and the devices that confine and control the particles, which are commonly built using magnets. Much of modern-day development of cavities and other kinds of accelerating structures is to achieve the highest possible gradient; a larger gradient generally means a smaller – and therefore cheaper – accelerator. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
