ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a historical introduction of conventional acceleration, and focuses on waveguides, resonant cavities fed by radio-frequency (RF) power generators. It provides an overview of the basics of linacs and longitudinal dynamics. The chapter describes a cathode ray tube TV, which is a common example of an accelerator with all subsystems present: a beam source, focusing and steering, an accelerating region and an interaction or a target area. It describes general properties of resonant cavities, their quality factors, shunt impedance, and the definition of the resonance modes. An enclosed section of a waveguide forms the simplest RF cavity, called a pill-box cavity. Cylindrical pill-box cavities are very common in accelerators. Acceleration in a synchrotron is provided by the longitudinal electric fields generated in RF cavities placed on the orbit. While the linac length constitutes major fraction of the length of a linear collider, in a free electron laser, the linac length is a noticeable fraction of the overall length.
