Particle accelerators (a.k.a. atom smashers) are devices that use electric and magnetic fields to accelerate charged particles to high speeds and collide them into a target. Out of the energy that was put into the accelerated particle, new matter particles can form in a collision. You can think of this as E=mc^2 in action!

The first cyclotron, invented by Ernest O. Lawrence

A cyclotron essentially consists of two hollow D-shaped electrodes (dees) in a vacuum chamber, between the poles of an electromagnet. A charged particle initially in the middle of the gap between the dees is drawn into one of the cavities by an electric field. Due to the magnetic field, the particle’s path curves. When the polarity between the electrodes switches, the particle is attracted to the opposite electrode and accelerated into the other cavity. The polarity keeps switching at a specific frequency and the particle is continually accelerated by a resonance effect. Eventually, a charged plate deflects the path of the particles and diverts them into a target. The entire acceleration process only takes a fraction of a second.

http://education.jlab.org/glossary/cyclotron.html

We are going to accelerate protons to an energy of 2.3 MeV using dees with a radius of 6 inches and a 1.6 Tesla electromagnet. It's important that we reach that energy so that positrons (the antimatter counterparts of electrons) will be able to form.

See the pdf document in our "Project Description" section for more detailed information.