Accelerators for pedestrians

These notes are derived from a course of 11 lectures, which were originally designed as a very basic introduction to circular particle accelerators for people with little or no previous experience in the field. The course itself has since been refined and is now given on a regular basis for the PS accelerator operations technicians. Wherever possible, I have tried to describe the basic theory of synchrotrons and storage rings using simple, easy to follow ideas and models. For this reason, complicated mathematical arguments have been avoided as much as possible.