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In looking at a new question today I found it tagged , which I removed as my understanding is that the phase is universally used to discuss the physics of beams in accelerators and of the accelerating devices themselves, but not of experiments done using beams.

However, the tag currently has no tag wiki and I find many questions tagged in what I would describe as the wrong way.

Opinions from the floor?

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I'd defer to your judgment on this one. Anyway, it's probably not going to take much more to settle this one than to just edit the tag wiki - but it certainly doesn't hurt to solicit community input. – David Zaslavsky♦ Aug 14 '12 at 21:54

2 Answers

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Right. Questions like "Could LEP II have discovered a 125GeV Higgs?" might be "collider physics" or "high-energy physics", but they're not "accelerator physics" despite being tagged as such.

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This is not a bad idea, though I don't generally hear people apply a special label to those kinds of discussions. It's just part of particle physics. Care to write tag a few questions and write the tag wiki? – dmckee♦ Aug 16 '12 at 1:33
I think that some other candidates are physics.stackexchange.com/questions/31405/… and physics.stackexchange.com/questions/19037/… – dmckee♦ Aug 16 '12 at 1:35
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I have written a tag wiki that reflect my understanding of the usage of the term:

is appropriate for questions dealing with the physics of beams in accelerators; the ways in which beams are generated; the accelerating, bending and focusing equipment; and the intrinsic limits that arise in trying to manipulate beams. This tag should not generally be applied to questions that concern the use of the particle beams once they arrive in the experimental hall.

and will begin working on the tagged question a few at a time.

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re-tagged as particle-accelerators looks better. I don't think the physics part is necessary since questions here are physics based anyway. – John McVirgo Aug 16 '12 at 20:01
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@John, people who work on accelerators talk about their discipline as "accelerator physics" just like people who take the beams say that they do "particle physics" or "nuclear physics". It is the name of the sub-field. – dmckee♦ Aug 16 '12 at 20:04

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