Accelerators
At the core of Quantum Minecraft Dynamics are the Accelerator Multiblocks. There are many different types: Linear, Synchrotron, Beam Diverter, Decelerator and Beam Splitter. All these do different things, but use the same basic principles and materials. Here we go into the basic principles.
Accelerators need to be cooled as they produce heat. If they overheat while operating, some of the overheating components will explode. To cool an accelerator you need to pipe in a cold coolant and pipe out a hot coolant. Each coolant has a different temperature, this determines the minimum temperature your accelerator can reach. For example, Liquid helium is 4 Kelvin (K), Liquid Nitrogen is 70 K. The valid coolants and their temperatures can be seen in JEI. To pipe coolant in and out of an accelerator you need at least 2 Accelerator Coolant Vents, one in input mode and one in output mode. The mode can be switched using the Nuclearcraft multitool.
All Accelerators are made out of Accelerator Casing or Accelerator Glass, and also require an energy port, an input and an output coolant vent. Inside each accelerator, is a connected line of Beam Blocks that the particles will travel through. Around this beam can be 3 different types of component structures: Radio Frequency (RF) Cavities, Dipole Magnets and Quadrupole Magnets. Around these component structures there are coolers to cool the whole accelerator.
A RF cavity is constructed from RF Cavity blocks of the same type in a ring of 8 around the accelerator beam as shown.
RF Cavities cannot be directly next to each other, requiring at least a block of space between them. RF cavities increase the accelerating voltage of the accelerator and thus the energy of the resulting particle out the end. The accelerating voltage of each RF Cavity is determined by the material of the cavity's blocks.
Dipole Magnets are created by placing an Accelerator Electromagnet of the same type above and below a beam and then filling the rest of the 3x3x3 space around that beam with Accelerator yokes. The strength of each dipole is the strength of the electromagnet used to create it.
Dipoles bend the path of beams so one must be placed in each corner. Dipoles can not be used in Linear Accelerators.
Quadrupole Magnets are constructed from 4 Accelerator Electromagnets of the same type around a Accelerator Beam as shown.
Quadrupoles increase the focus (Basically inverse area/confinement) of the particle beam. The focus is used to tell how far a beam can travel. If the beam travels too far in an accelerator it will not output. So more quadrupoles need to be added to compensate for the loss in focus. The strength of a quadrupole is determined by the type of electromagnet used to create it.
Each RF cavity block and electromagnet produce heat while operating. To get rid of this heat coolers are placed inside the accelerator. They only work if their required rules are met. These rules are shown on the tool tips of each cooler.
Hovering over the Power bar (left) of the gui will show you the power stored in the accelerator and the power used by the accelerator when on. The power used is P=p/ε where p is sum of all the components base power and ε is the average component efficiency. The percentage in brackets is 1/ε which is how much of the base power is used.
There are 2 sources of heating in an accelerator. External heating from the warm environment, which depends on where the accelerator is and is always present, and internal heating. This heat comes from the components in the accelerator and is only present when the accelerator is turned on.
Hovering over the heat bar (middle) of the gui will show you the heat stored in the accelerator, the cooling rate determined by the coolers in the accelerator, the maximum heating the most heat the accelerator will experience this is the sum of the internal and external heating and the maximum external heating. The external heating is He=κA(Te-Ta) where Te is the environment temperature usually around 300 K, Ta is the accelerators temperature, A is the surface area of the accelerator and κ is thermal conductivity (the default config is 0.0025). The maximum External heating is therefore when Ta = 0 K. The Internal Heating is the sum of all the component blocks' heat generation values.
Hovering over the coolant bar (right) of the gui will show you the amount of coolant stored, the maximum rate coolant will be used and the maximum amount of hot coolant is produced. The Accelerators coolant tanks (both input and output) can be cleared by holding shift in the gui and pressing the button that appears.
The resulting focus is calculated using f = f0 - (α * (1 + |q|*sqrt(I / Ii)))*L + |q|*Bq where f0 is the input beam's focus. For a new beam created from an Ion Source the starting focus is shown in the recipe (normally it is 0.2). α is the beam attenuation rate (this can be seen on Beamline's tool tip, the default config is 0.02), I is the pu/t of the beam, Ii is the beam scaling factor (10000 for default configs), L is the length of the accelerator, q is the particle's charge and Bq is the Quadrupole strength of the accelerator which is the sum of the strength of each quadrupole.