Interactions of Beams with Surroundings

With the exceptions of Synchrotron Radiation sources, beams of accelerated particles are generally designed to interact either with one another (in the case of colliders) or with a specific target (for the operation of Fixed Target experiments, the production of secondary beams and for medical applications). However, in addition to the desired interactions there are unwanted interactions of the high energy particles which can produce undesirable side effects. These interactions can arise from the unavoidable presence of residual gas in the accelerator vacuum chamber, or from the impact of particles lost from the beam on aperture limits around the accelerator, as well as the final beam dump. The wanted collisions of the beams in a collider to produce potentially interesting High Energy Physics events also reduces the density of the circulating beam and can produce high fluxes of secondary particles.