I am working on a personal hard science-fiction project but when I analysed the following situation, in the context of special relativity my conclusion seems counter intuitive and perhaps I am misunderstanding the underlying physical principles of SR which is not my strong point.
A particle is permanently moving in a circle at some constant relativistic speed. I wanted to find the radius of this circular trajectory for a given acceleration, and how long it would take for the particle to complete one full revolution in proper time.
I calculated the relativistic period (in proper time) should be $T = \frac{2\pi r}{\gamma v}$ where $r$ is the radius, $v$ is the constant speed, and $\gamma$ is the Lorentz factor which is easy to get from $v$.
For the radius, as there is never space contraction in direction to the center of the circular trajectory (the radius is always perpendicular to the motion) it would be logical to me that the radius has the same value $r = v^2/a$ as for Newtonian mechanichs. However this would imply that for a given acceleration $a$ the radius would never exceed $c^2/a$ for any given speed $v$, which I find counter intuitive. Have I come to the wrong conclusion because I am suffering from some misconception about the fundamental principles of SR?