Particle Beams

Particle beam projectors are a type of directed energy weapon that functions by accelerating subatomic or atomic particles to relativistic speeds toward a target, using an electromagnetic field. These particles travel close to lightspeed, and thus impart considerable kinetic energy on targets that they hit, heating them up similarly to lasers. Although they travel slightly slower and have reduced effective range, particle beams have several advantages over conventional lasers. They emit considerable amounts of radiation at locations they hit, which can easily disrupt sensitive electronics and computer systems, and cause damage to living organisms. When consisting of smaller particles, such as electrons, particle beams can bypass large amounts of matter, making them effective armour-piercing weapons. Most particle beams are magnetically charged, as they must be on order for magnetic fields to accelerate them. However, such particles naturally push away from each other, reducing effective ranges. In order to counteract this, and bypass magnetic deflectors, more advanced particle beam projectors create neutral particle beams, which are ionised, accelerated, and then de-ionised before exiting the projector.