In accelerator physics, the term acceleration voltage means the effective voltage surpassed by a charged particle along a defined straight line. If not specified further, the term is likely to refer to the longitudinal effective acceleration voltage
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The acceleration voltage is an important quantity for the design of microwave cavities for particle accelerators. See also shunt impedance.
For the special case of an electrostatic field that is surpassed by a particle, the acceleration voltage is directly given by integrating the electric field along its path. The following considerations are generalized for time-dependent fields.
Longitudinal voltage
The longitudinal effective acceleration voltage is given by the kinetic energy gain experienced by a particle with velocity
For resonant structures, e.g. SRF cavities, this may be expressed as a Fourier integral, because the fields
Since the particles kinetic energy can only be changed by electric fields, this reduces to
Particle Phase considerations
Note that by the given definition,
To account for this degree of freedom, an additional phase factor
which leads to a modified expression
for the voltage. In comparison to the former expression, only a phase factor with unit length occurs. Thus, the absolute value of the complex quantity
Transit time factor
A quantity named transit time factor
is often defined which relates the effective acceleration voltage
In this notation, the effective acceleration voltage
Transverse voltage
In symbolic analogy to the longitudinal voltage, one can define effective voltages in two orthogonal directions
which describe the integrated forces that deflect the particle from its design path. Since the modes that deflect particles may have arbitrary polarizations, the transverse effective voltage may be defined using polar notation by
with the polarization angle
Note that this transverse voltage does not necessarily relate to a real change in the particles energy, since magnetic fields are also able to deflect particles. Also, this is an approximation for small-angle deflection of the particle, where the particles trajectory through the field can still be approximated by a straight line.