Stochastic cooling

Stochastic cooling is a form of particle beam cooling. It is used in some particle accelerators and storage rings to control the emittance of the particle beams in the machine. This process uses the electrical signals that the individual charged particles generate in a feedback loop to reduce the tendency of individual particles to move away from the other particles in the beam. It is accurate to think of this as adiabatic cooling, or the reduction of entropy, in much the same way that a refrigerator or an air conditioner cools its contents.