Accelerator

Particle accelerators are outstanding teaching tools fir training physics students in research techniques as well as an exciting way to do a wide rang of instruction labs including measuring the rest energy of an electron, proving Einstein's equation E=MC², and measuring the size of the nucleus.The TSU accelerator facility is a undergraduate teaching and research facility and one of only 6 undergraduate tandem facilities in the U.S. Past undergraduate research assistants have gone to graduate school at MIT, Stanford, Rice, UT, and many other fine schools as well as being selected for summer REU programs at CALTECH, UNT, TCU, etc.

The TSU accelerator group performs a wide range of research including basic ion-atom collision studies and the use of nuclear technique for materials analysis for electronics and environmental engineering studies. Some of the techniques available include Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) and Channeling, Forward Recoil Spectrometry (RFS) which is also known as ERD, Nuclear Reaction Analysis (NRA), and Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE). The laboratory has a wide range of detectors including large NaI well detector, 40% efficiency HpGe gamma ray detector with environmental shield, and ultra-thin x-ray detector capable of detecting elements down to Be.