A particle-beam weapon uses a high-energy beam of atomic or subatomic particles to damage the target by disrupting its atomic and/or molecular structure. A particle-beam weapon is a type of directed-energy weapon, which directs energy in a particular and focused direction using particles with minuscule mass. Some particle-beam weapons have potential practical applications, e.g. as an antiballistic missile defense system for the United States and its cancelled Strategic Defense Initiative. They have been known by myriad names: phasers, disruptors, particle accelerator guns, ion cannons, proton beams, lightning rays, rayguns, etc. The concept of particle-beam weapons comes from sound scientific principles and experiments currently underway around the world. One effective process to cause damage to or destroy a target is to simply overheat it until it is no longer operational. However, after decades of R&D, particle-beam weapons are still very much at the research stage and it remains to be seen if or when they will be deployed as practical, high-performance military weapons. Particle accelerators are a well-developed technology used in scientific research for decades. They use electromagnetic fields to accelerate and direct charged particles along a predetermined path, and electrostatic "lenses" to focus these streams for collisions. The cathode ray tube in many twentieth-century televisions and computer monitors is a very simple type of particle accelerator. More powerful versions include synchrotrons and cyclotrons used in nuclear research. A particle-beam weapon is a weaponized version of this technology. It accelerates charged particles, with highly constricted construction, operation and maintenance requirements, and thus unable to be weaponized using present or near-future technologies.
Beam generation
Charged particle beams diverge rapidly due to mutual repulsion, so neutral particle beams are more commonly proposed. A neutral-particle-beam weapon ionizes atoms by either stripping an electron off of each atom, or by allowing each atom to capture an extra electron. The charged particles are then accelerated, and neutralized again by adding or removing electrons afterwards. Cyclotron particle accelerators, linear particle accelerators, and Synchrotron particle accelerators can accelerate positively charged hydrogen ions until their velocity approaches the speed of light, and each individual ion has a kinetic energy range of 100 MeV to 1000 MeV or more. Then the resulting high energy protons can capture electrons from electron emitter electrodes, and be thus electrically neutralized. This creates an electrically neutral beam of high energy hydrogen atoms, that can proceed in a straight line at near the speed of light to smash into its target and damage it. The pulsed particle beam emitted by such a weapon may contain 1 gigajoule of kinetic energy or more. The speed of a beam approaching that of light in combination with the energy created by the weapon was thought to negate any realistic means of defending a target against the beam. Target hardening through shielding or materials selection was thought to be impractical or ineffective in 1984, especially if the beam could be maintained at full power and precisely focused on the target.
Experiments
The U.S. Defense Strategic Defense Initiative put into development the technology of a neutral particle beam to be used as a weapon in outer space. Neutral beam accelerator technology was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. A prototype neutral hydrogen beam weapon was launched aboard a suborbitalsounding rocket from White Sands Missile Range in July 1989 as part of the Beam Experiments Aboard Rocket project. It reached a maximum altitude of 124 miles, and successfully operated in space for 4 minutes before returning to earth intact. In 2006, the recovered experimental device was transferred from Los Alamos to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
