Why does the output of a linear accelerator increase in time?

[lavster]

I was reading that i certain type of linear accelerator increases in output though time... why would this be? If anything i would have thought it would have been the opposite..

thanks

 

[Vanadium 50]

Where were you reading it and what exactly did it say?

 

[lavster]

A published journal it says - "The Wellington Cancer Centre is equipped with two matched linear accelerators (Varian 2100CD) linear accelerators (identified as SN1027 and SN42) ...the SN1027 had a consistent increase in the average output of about 2.5% per year" the SN1027 has a linear accelerator but also filter so that low energies get absorbed. and beam shaping devices...

thanks

 

[Bill_K]

lavster, I don't know about those, but here's a graph of the integrated luminosity of another accelerator, the Tevatron, over a period of about a decade. Steady operation would result in a constant slope, but as you can see the slope increased considerably as time went on.

The reasons center about the fact that an accelerator is a very complex machine, and there are a lot of very smart people whose job it is to make it work continually better and better. It's a result of small engineering improvements, more experience in setting adjustments, and elimination of glitches to reduce the machine downtime.