Cyclotron in the context of "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory"

In particle physics, a meson (/ˈmiːzɒn, ˈmɛzɒn/) is a type of hadronic subatomic particle composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks, usually one of each, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of quark subparticles, they have a meaningful physical size, a diameter of roughly one femtometre (10 m), which is about 0.6 times the size of a proton or neutron. All mesons are unstable, with the longest-lived lasting for only a few tenths of a nanosecond. Heavier mesons decay to lighter mesons and ultimately to stable electrons, neutrinos and photons.

Outside the nucleus, mesons appear in nature only as short-lived products of very high-energy collisions between particles made of quarks, such as cosmic rays (high-energy protons and neutrons) and baryonic matter. Mesons are routinely produced artificially in cyclotrons or other particle accelerators in the collisions of protons, antiprotons, or other particles.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada. With an annual research budget of $893 million, UBC funds 9,992 projects annually in various fields of study within the industrial sector, as well as governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The Vancouver campus is situated on Point Grey campus lands, an unincorporated area next to the City of Vancouver and the University Endowment Lands. The university is located 10 km (6 mi) west of Downtown Vancouver. UBC is also home to TRIUMF, Canada's national particle and nuclear physics laboratory, which boasts the world's largest cyclotron. In addition to the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, UBC and the Max Planck Society collectively established the first Max Planck Institute in North America, specializing in quantum mechanics. Green College is UBC's transdisciplinary semi-independent post-graduate live-in college and is situated on the north-eastern tip of campus adjacent to Burrard Inlet. One of Canada's largest research libraries, the UBC Library system has over 8.3 million items (including print and electronic) among its 21 branches. It is visited annually by 3.1 million people or 9.7 million virtually. The Okanagan campus, acquired in 2005, is located in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor of Spanish descent who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his discovery of resonance states in particle physics using the hydrogen bubble chamber. In 2007 the American Journal of Physics commented, "Luis Alvarez was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century."

After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936, Alvarez went to work for Ernest Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never before observed. He produced tritium using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime. In collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron.

Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen, silicon, and hydrogen. When exposed to moist air, it forms oxides and hydrides that can expand the sample up to 70% in volume, which in turn flake off as a powder that is pyrophoric. It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous.

Plutonium was first synthesized and isolated in late 1940 and early 1941, by deuteron bombardment of uranium-238 in the 1.5-metre (60 in) cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. First, neptunium-238 (half-life 2.1 days) was synthesized, which then beta-decayed to form the new element with atomic number 94 and atomic weight 238 (half-life 88 years). Since uranium had been named after the planet Uranus and neptunium after the planet Neptune, element 94 was named after Pluto, which at the time was also considered a planet. Wartime secrecy prevented the University of California team from publishing its discovery until 1948.

49°14′52″N 123°13′50″W / 49.247792°N 123.230596°W / 49.247792; -123.230596

TRIUMF is Canada's national particle accelerator centre. It is considered Canada's premier physics laboratory, and consistently regarded as one of the world's leading subatomic physics research centres. Owned and operated by a consortium of universities, it is on the south campus of one of its founding members, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It houses the world's largest normal conducting cyclotron, a source of 520 MeV protons, which was named an IEEE Milestone in 2010. Its accelerator-focused activities involve particle physics, nuclear physics, nuclear medicine, materials science, and detector and accelerator development.

In accelerator physics, a beamline refers to the trajectory of the beam of particles, including the overall construction of the path segment (guide tubes, diagnostic devices) along a specific path of an accelerator facility. This part is either

• the line in a linear accelerator along which a beam of particles travels, or
• the path leading from particle generator (e.g. a cyclic accelerator, synchrotron light sources, cyclotrons, or spallation sources) to the experimental end-station.

Beamlines usually end in experimental stations that utilize particle beams or synchrotron light obtained from a synchrotron, or neutrons from a spallation source or research reactor. Beamlines are used in experiments in particle physics, materials science, life science, chemistry, and molecular biology, but can also be used for irradiation tests or to produce isotopes.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It maintains three campuses in Greater Vancouver, respectively located in Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The 170-hectare (420-acre) main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and comprises more than 37,000 students and 200,000 alumni. The university was created in an effort to expand higher education across Canada. In 2025, it became the first university in Canada to adopt university-wide open scholarship principles.

Simon Fraser University is a member of multiple national and international higher education associations, including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, International Association of Universities, and Universities Canada. SFU has also partnered with other universities and agencies to operate joint research facilities such as the TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, which houses the world's largest cyclotron, and Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, a major centre for teaching and research in marine biology.

During World War II, the Empire of Japan had several programs exploring the use of nuclear fission for military technology, including nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Like the similar wartime programs in Nazi Germany, they were comparatively small, suffered from Allied air raids, shortages, disarray, and did not progress beyond the laboratory stage.

The Imperial Japanese Army initiated the "Ni-Go Project" for nuclear weapons at the RIKEN institute, led by physicist Yoshio Nishina. Work was limited to cyclotron research, production of small quantities of uranium hexafluoride, and an unsuccessful attempt to enrich it via thermal diffusion in a Clusius tube.