How Does a Particle Accelerator Work?

Particle accelerators come in two main forms: linear (linacs) and circular (synchrotrons/colliders). In a linac, particles pass through a series of radio-frequency cavities that apply oscillating electric fields, giving the particles a "push" with each cavity. In a circular accelerator like CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), superconducting magnets cooled to −271°C bend particle beams into a ring, allowing them to pass through accelerating cavities thousands of times. The LHC accelerates protons to 99.999999% of the speed of light before colliding them head-on. Detectors surrounding the collision point (like ATLAS and CMS) record the debris, from which physicists reconstruct what happened — famously confirming the Higgs boson in 2012.