Proton Synchrotron

The Proton Synchrotron is a particle accelerator at CERN. It is CERN's first synchrotron, beginning its operation in 1959. For a brief period the PS was the world's highest energy particle accelerator. It has since served as a pre-accelerator for the Intersecting Storage Rings and the Super Proton Synchrotron , and is currently part of the Large Hadron Collider accelerator complex. In addition to protons, PS has accelerated alpha particles, oxygen and sulphur nuclei, electrons, positrons and antiprotons.
Today, the PS is part of the CERN's accelerator complex. It accelerates protons for the LHC as well as a number of other experimental facilities at CERN. Using a proton source, the protons are first accelerated to the energy of 50 MeV in the linear accelerator Linac 2. The beam is then injected into the Proton Synchrotron Booster , which accelerates the protons to 1.4 GeV, followed by the PS, which pushes the beam to 25 GeV. The protons are then sent to the Super Proton Synchrotron, and accelerated to 450 GeV before they are injected into the LHC. The PS also accelerate heavy ions from the Low Energy Ion Ring at an energy of 72 MeV, for collisions in the LHC.

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