Question

What are the limitations of a cyclotron?

Answer 1

Hint: In this question, we will see the major limitation of cyclotrons is that it cannot be accelerated beyond certain energy limits and it cannot be used for very small mass charged particles-like an electron, very large mass charged particles and for uncharged particles.

Step-By-Step answer:
A cyclotron is a device or more precisely a particle accelerator. When a charged particle is moving inside the cyclotron It uses a constant magnetic field to turn the path moving charges into a semicircular path and it uses a square wave electric field or an AC voltage to accelerate the electrons or charged particles at each gap crossing between the two "Dees" of the magnetic field region.

The limitations of a cyclotron are given as follows:
1. There is a limitation to the energy up to which the particles can be accelerated this is because the mass varies with the velocity. Therefore Cyclotrons are not feasible for 100 keV electron acceleration.
2. Cyclotron can only accelerate charged particles such as deuterons, protons, and alpha particles; it does not work on uncharged particles. Electrons are also cannot be accelerated by the cyclotron it is because the mass of an electron that is $9.1 \times {10^{ - 31}}$ kg is small and due to this electron starts moving with a very high velocity even with a small increase in energy and, therefore, they can instantly go out of step with an oscillating electric field.
3. Cyclotrons cannot accelerate positively charged particles with very large masses because of the relativistic effect.

Note: For these types of questions we need to know the practical application of motions in the presence of both magnetic and electric fields known as cross fields. One of the famous devices that comes under this is cyclotron so we need to be well versed with the working principle of a cyclotron and the calculation part related to it.