ANU, Canberra
Electrostatic accelerator laboratories were the nurseries for the heavy ion physics research of today and the accelerators this research needed. The first conference, of what has evolved into the HIAT series, was the "International Conference on the Technology of Electrostatic Accelerators" hosted by the Daresbury Laboratory in 1973. While some of the founding labs of this series have ceased doing accelerator based physics, electrostatic accelerators still inject beams into present day heavy ion boosters. Electrostatic accelerators also continue to provide beams for nuclear and applied physics in laboratories with and without boosters. The development of electrostatic accelerators remains active and will continue in the next few years. The improvements have been spurred by injection beam requirements of boosters as well as the special transmission and stability needs of accelerator mass spectrometry. The survey of the electrostatic accelerator community presented here, has identified a broad range of improvements and uses as well as future technical directions for electrostatic accelerators.
IFIN-HH, Magurele-Bucharest
The Bucharest FN Tandem Accelerator was put in operation in 1973 and upgraded a first time in 1983 to 9 MV. In the period 2006-2009 a second program of the tandem upgrade was performed aiming to transform this accelerator in a modern and versatile facility for atomic and nuclear physics studies as well as for different applications using accelerated ion beams. The upgrade was achieved by replacing the main components of the tandem by new ones and by adding new components. The old HVEC belt of the Van de Graaff generator was replaced by a "Pelletron" system, the old inclined field stainless steel electrodes accelerator tubes were replaced by titanium spiral field tubes, the old HICONEX 834 sputter negative ion source was replaced by a new SNICS II sputter source and all old electronic equipment including RMN and Hall probe gauss meters as well as low voltage and high voltage power supplies for the magnets, lenses and ion sources were replaced by new ones. The new equipment added to the tandem consists of a helium negative ion source, a new injector based on a multi-cathode ion source 40 MC-SNICS II for AMS applications, a new GVM, a new pulsing system in the millisecond range and a new chopper and bunching system for pulsing the ion beam in the nanosecond range. Now the tandem is currently operated in very stable conditions up to 9 MV on a basis of about 4000 hours/year accelerating a broad range of ion species.
ANL, Argonne
Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
The ongoing energy upgrade of the heavy-ion linac ATLAS at ANL includes a new cryomodule containing seven 109MHz β=0.15 quarter-wave superconducting cavities to provide an additional 15 MV voltage. Several new features have been incorporated into both the cavity and cryomodule design. For example, the cryomodule separates the cavity vacuum space from the insulating vacuum, a first for TEM cavities. The cavities are designed in order to cancel the beam steering effect due to the RF field. Clean techniques have been applied to achieve low-particulate rf surfaces and are essential for reliable long-term high-gradient operation. The sealed clean subassembly consisting of cavities, beam spools, beam valves, couplers, vacuum manifold, and support frame has been attached to the top plate of the cryomodule outside the clean room. Initial commissioning results are presented. The module was designed and built as a prototype for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) driver linac, however, a similar design can be effectively used in the front-end of SC proton linacs based on TEM-class SC cavities.
ANL, Argonne
TechSource, Santa Fe
CLASSE, Ithaca
Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
A new cryomodule with seven low-beta superconducting radio frequency (SRF) quarter wave niobium cavities has been designed and constructed as an energy upgrade project for the ATLAS accelerator at Argonne National Laboratory. The technology developed for this project is the basis for the next generation superconducting heavy ion accelerators. This paper will discuss the methods employed to tune the cavities eigenfrequency to match the accelerator master oscillator frequency and the development of the RF systems used to both drive the cavity and keep the cavity phase locked during operation.
CERN, Geneva
For the post-accelerator of radioactive ion beams at CERN a major upgrade is planned to take place in the next 4-5 years. The upgrade consists in boosting the energy of the machine from 3MeV/u up to 10 MeV/u with beams of mass-to-charge ratio 2.5<A/q<4.5 and in replacing part of the existing normal conducting linac. The new accelerator is based on two gap independently phased 101.28 MHz Nb sputtered superconducting Quarter Wave Resonators (QWRs). Two cavity geometries, “low” and “high” β, have been selected for covering the whole energy range. A R&D program has started in 2008 looking at the different aspects of the machine, in particular beam dynamics studies, high β cavity development and cryomodule design. A status report of the different activities is given here.
GSI, Darmstadt
ITEP, Moscow
In the frame of the FAIR project in spring 2008 an irradiation test of superconducting magnet components was done at GSI Darmstadt. Cave HHD with the beam dump of SIS18 synchrotron was taken as the test area. The beam dump was reequipped to meet the irradiation test requirements. Thereby the first stage of preparation for the irradiation test was to investigate the radiation field around the reconstructed beam dump from the point of view of radiation safety. FLUKA simulations were performed to estimate the dose rate inside and immediate outside of the cave during the irradiation. The simulations showed safe level of the radiation field, and it was later confirmed by the measurements provided by the radiation safety group of GSI.
CNAO, Milano
INFN/LNF, Frascati
The Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica (CNAO) is the first Italian center for deep hadrontherapy, namely an innovative type of oncological radiotherapy using hadrons. The CNAO machine installation is in progress and alternates with lines commissioning, started in the Summer 2008. The present paper reports about Beam Diagnostics (BD) choices, status and post-commissioning evaluation, as concerns the Low Energy Beam Transfer (LEBT) line monitors.
IUAC, New Delhi
The facility for constructing superconducting niobium resonators indigenously was commissioned at the Inter- University Accelerator Centre in 2002. It was primarily setup to fabricate niobium quarter wave resonators for the superconducting booster linac. Starting with a single quarter wave resonator in the first phase, two completely indigenous resonators were successfully built, tested and installed in the cryomodules. Subsequently production of fifteen more resonators for the second and third modules began. Several existing resonators have been successfully reworked and restored from a variety of problems. In addition to building resonators for the in-house programs, a project to build two single spoke resonators for Project- X at Fermi Lab, USA has also been taken up. A Tesla-type single cell cavity is also being built in collaboration with RRCAT, Indore. This paper presents details of the fabrication, test results and future plans.
INFN/LNL, Legnaro
In the LNL Heavy Ion Accelerator Complex, ALPI is a superconducting linear accelerator (Linac) whose first runs date back to 1993. In more than 15 years the LNL ALPI Linac evolved from an initial small configuration of 5 cryostats and 16 resonators to the actual size of 20 cryostats and 74 resonators. The superconducting character of ALPI implies the availability of a large cryogenic plant and distribution system to supply the liquid helium necessary to keep the resonators at 4.2 K. While the Linac structure has grown in the years and, in the mean time, the related cryogenic plant and distribution systems were enlarged and upgraded twice, the related control system remained largely unchanged in its main parts and it is now the first sub-system that urgently needs a deep renewing. The challenge to renovate a working control system with limited shut-downs is the subject of this presentation.
IPNO/IN2P3/CNRS, Orsay
GANIL, Caen
JINR, Dubna
Physics that motivated the building of the LISE magnetic spectrometer, main ideas exposed in the scientific council of GANIL June 4th 1981 by M. Brian and M. Fleury, were: atomic physics studies with stripped ions and the study of new isotopes produced by the fragmentation of beams. The LISE line is a doubly achromatic spectrometer (angle and position), with a resolution better than 10-3. Since the first experiment done in 1984, several improvements of the spectrometer were performed: use of a achromatic degrader (1987, used for the first time in the world), building of the achromatic deviation and the Wien Filter (1990), building of a new selection dipole and associated vertical platform (1994), building of the new LISE2000 line (2001), use of the CAVIAR detector (2002), building of the CLIM target (2007). Despite an extreme international competition, the LISE spectrometer remains a world-leader equipment using more than 50 % and up to 90 % of the beam time available at GANIL. This paper presents the status of CAVIAR detector which consists of a MWPC dedicated to in flight particle position at the first dispersive plane of LISE. Since two years, intensive efforts were done with the objective to make available a “plug and play” detector for nuclear physic experiment. We will describe the system from MWPC up to acquisition system. As example few experimental results will be presented.