This two-week course introduces students to the main concepts of accelerator physics. We will start from basic beam dynamics topics: how to accelerate beams and keep them focused in the accelerator chambers, how to maintain stable acceleration, and some of the mechanisms by which the beam motion can become unstable. We then focus on the electron storage ring. Here synchrotron radiation plays an important role and beams are naturally damped to a very small size and divergence, critical for many applications, such as synchrotron radiation sources.
The course combines lectures and experiments both in the lab and at an accelerator to illustrate the main concepts taught in the classes. We visit several accelerators in Berlin during the second half of the course, including the Metrology Light Source of the PTB, the Eye-Tumor Proton Therapy Center and the BESSY II Synchrotron Light Source.