Bruno Touschek vs. machine builders: AdA, the first matter-antimatter collider

摘要

During the second half of 1950s new ideas in the accelerator art were put forward by different groups aiming at the development of high-energy facilities. In the general context of both these developments and the theoretical issues of the time, the origin of AdA, the first electron-positron collider developed at Frascati (Italy) in the early 1960s following Bruno Touschek's proposal, is examined. A particular attention is devoted to the genesis of the idea exclusively focused from the very beginning on the importance of a systematic and thorough study of electron-positron collisions as a tool for investigating yet unexplored hadronic physics, and how this could be achieved, at least in principle, by constructing a single magnetic ring in which bunches of opposite sign could circulate and intersect many billion times. The reconstruction is based on unpublished manuscripts and personal notebooks preserved in Touschek's Archive of the Physics Department of Rome University “La Sapienza”, as well as on correspondence exchanged with Wolfgang Pauli in the 1950's.