The theme of this volume, “Medical Applications of Accelerators”, is of enormous importance to human health and has a deep impact on our society.The invention of particle accelerators in the early 20th century created a whole new world for producing energetic X-rays, electrons, protons, neutrons and other particle beams. Immediately these beams found revolutionary applications in medicine. There are two important yet distinct medical applications. One is that accelerators produce radioisotopes for various nuclear medicines for millions of patients each year. The other is that accelerators produce particle beams for radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer. The particle beams can be X-rays (generated by high-energy electrons), protons, neutrons or heavy ions such as carbon. Today there are more than 5,000 accelerators routinely used in hospitals all over the world for nuclear medicine and cancer therapy. The great potential of accelerator applications in medicine can hardly be exaggerated.This volume contains 14 articles, all written by distinguished scholars.

The theme of this volume, ?Medical Applications of Accelerators?, is of enormous importance to human health and has a deep impact on our society.The invention of particle accelerators in the early 20th century created a whole new world for producing energetic X-rays, electrons, protons, neutrons and other particle beams. Immediately these beams found revolutionary applications in medicine. There are two important yet distinct medical applications. On the one hand, accelerators produce radioisotopes for various nuclear medicines for millions of patients each year, and on the other hand, they also produce particle beams for radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer. The particle beams can be X-rays (generated by high-energy electrons), protons, neutrons or heavy ions such as carbon. Today there are more than 5,000 accelerators routinely used in hospitals all over the world for nuclear medicine and cancer therapy. The great potential of accelerator applications in medicine can hardly be exaggerated.This volume contains 14 articles, all written by distinguished scholars.

Volume 10 in the series of the annual journal Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technology (RAST), will be its final volume. Its theme is 'The Future of Accelerators'. This volume, together with previous 9 volumes, gives readers a complete picture as well as detailed technical information about the accelerator field, and its many driving and fascinating aspects.This volume has 17 articles. The first 15 articles have a different approach from the previous volumes. They emphasize the more personal views, perspectives and advice from the frontier researchers rather than provide a review or survey of a specific subfield. This emphasis is more aligned with the theme of the current volume. The other two articles are dedicated respectively to Leon Lederman and Burton Richter, two prominent leaders of our community who left us last year.

Since its invention in the 1920s, particle accelerators have made tremendous progress in accelerator science, technology and applications. However, the fundamental acceleration principle, namely, to apply an external radiofrequency (RF) electric field to accelerate charged particles, remains unchanged. As this method (either room temperature RF or superconducting RF) is approaching its intrinsic limitation in acceleration gradient (measured in MeV/m), it becomes apparent that new methods with much higher acceleration gradient (measured in GeV/m) must be found for future very high energy accelerators as well as future compact (table-top or room-size) accelerators. This volume introduces a number of advanced accelerator concepts (AAC) — their principles, technologies and potential applications. For the time being, none of them stands out as a definitive direction in which to go. But these novel ideas are in hot pursuit and look promising. Furthermore, some AAC requires a high power laser system. This has the implication of bringing two different communities — accelerator and laser — to join forces and work together. It will have profound impact on the future of our field.Also included are two special articles, one on 'Particle Accelerators in China' which gives a comprehensive overview of the rapidly growing accelerator community in China. The other features the person-of-the-issue who was well-known nuclear physicist Jerome Lewis Duggan, a pioneer and founder of a huge community of industrial and medical accelerators in the US.

Over the last half century we have witnessed tremendous progress in the production of high-quality photons by electrons in accelerators. This dramatic evolution has seen four generations of accelerators as photon sources. The 1st generation used the electron storage rings built primarily for high-energy physics experiments, and the synchrotron radiation from the bending magnets was used parasitically. The 2nd generation involved rings dedicated to synchrotron radiation applications, with the radiation again from the bending magnets. The 3rd generation, currently the workhorse of these photon sources, is dedicated advanced storage rings that employ not only bending magnets but also insertion devices (wigglers and undulators) as the source of the radiation. The 4th generation, which is now entering operation, is photon sources based on the free electron laser (FEL), an invention made in the early 1970s.Each generation yielded growths in brightness and time resolution that were unimaginable just a few years earlier. In particular, the progression from the 3rd to 4th generation is a true revolution; the peak brilliance of coherent soft and hard x-rays has increased by 7-10 orders of magnitude, and the image resolution has reached the angstrom (1 Å = 10-10 meters) and femto-second (1 fs = 10-15 second) scales. These impressive capabilities have fostered fundamental scientific advances and led to an explosion of numerous possibilities in many important research areas including material science, chemistry, molecular biology and the life sciences. Even more remarkably, this field of photon source invention and development shows no signs of slowing down. Studies have already been started on the next generation of x-ray sources, which would have a time resolution in the atto-second (1 as = 10-18 second) regime, comparable to the time of electron motion inside atoms. It can be fully expected that these photon sources will stand out among the most powerful future science research tools. The physics community as well as the entire scientific community will hear of many pioneering and groundbreaking research results using these sources in the coming years.This volume contains fifteen articles, all written by leading scientists in their respective fields. It is aimed at the designers, builders and users of accelerator-based photon sources as well as general audience who are interested in this topic.

Since their debut in the late 1920s, particle accelerators have evolved into a backbone for the development of science and technology in modern society. Of about 30,000 accelerators at work in the world today, a majority is for applications in industry (about 20,000 systems worldwide).There are two major categories of industrial applications: materials processing and treatment, and materials analysis. Materials processing and treatment includes ion implantation (semi-conductor materials, metals, ceramics, etc.) and electron beam irradiation (sterilization of medical devices, food pasteurization, treatment of carcasses and tires, cross-linking of polymers, cutting and welding, curing of composites, etc.). Materials analysis covers ion beam analysis (IBA), non-destructive detection using photons and neutrons, as well as accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). All the products that are processed, treated and inspected using beams from particle accelerators are estimated to have a collective value of US$500 billion per annum worldwide. Accelerators are also applied for environment protection, such as purifying drinking water, treating waste water, disinfecting sewage sludge and removing pollutants from flue gases.Industrial accelerators continue to evolve, in terms of new applications, qualities and capabilities, and reduction of their costs. Breakthroughs are encountered whenever a new product is made, or an existing product becomes more cost effective. Their impact on our society continues to grow with the potential to address key issues in economics or the society of today.This volume contains fourteen articles, all authored by renowned scientists in their respective fields.

Each generation yielded growths in brightness and time resolution that were unimaginable just a few years earlier. In particular, the progression from the 3rd to 4th generation is a true revolution; the peak brilliance of coherent soft and hard x-rays has increased by 7-10 orders of magnitude, and the image resolution has reached the angstrom (1 [symbol] = 10-10 meters) and femto-second (1 fs = 10-15 second) scales. These impressive capabilities have fostered fundamental scientific advances and led to an explosion of numerous possibilities in many important research areas including material science, chemistry, molecular biology and the life sciences. Even more remarkably, this field of photon source invention and development shows no signs of slowing down. Studies have already been started on the next generation of x-ray sources, which would have a time resolution in the atto-second (1 as = 10-18 second) regime, comparable to the time of electron motion inside atoms.