V. Vlachoudis

Beam cooling with ionization losses

Abstract This novel type of Ionization Cooling is an effective method in order to enhance the (strong) interaction probability of slow (few MeV/A) ions stored in a small ring. The many traversals through a thin target strongly improve the nuclear reaction rate with respect to a single-pass collision, in a steady configuration in which ionization losses of a target “foil” (typically few hundred μg/cm 2 thick) are continuously recovered by an RF-cavity. With a flat foil, betatron oscillations are “cooled”, but the momentum spread diverges exponentially, since faster (slower) particles ionize less (more) than the average. In order to “cool” the beam also longitudinally, a chromaticity has to be introduced with a wedge-shaped “foil”. Therefore, in equilibrium conditions, multiple scattering and straggling are both balanced by phase-space compression. Classic Ionization Cooling [A.A. Kolomensky, Atomnaya Energiya 19 (1965) 534; Yu.M. Ado, V.I. Balbekov, Atomnaya Energiya 31(1) (1971) 40–44; A.N. Skrinsky, V.V. Parkhomchuk, Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 12 (1981) 3; E.A. Perevendentsev, A.N. Skrinsky, in: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on High Energy Acceleration, 1983, p. 485] is designed to cool the direct beam until it has been compressed and extracted for further use. In practice, this limits its applicability to non-interacting muon beams. Instead, in this new method, applicable to strongly interacting collisions, the circulating beam is not extracted. Ionization cooling provides “in situ” storage of the beam until it is converted by a nuclear interaction with the target. Simple reactions—for instance 7 Li + D → 8 Li + p —are more favourably produced in the “mirror” kinematical frame, namely with a heavier ion colliding against a gas-jet D 2 target. Kinematics is generally very favourable, with angles in a narrow angular cone (around ∼10° for the mentioned reaction) and with a relatively concentrated outgoing energy spectrum which allows an efficient collection of 8 Li as a neutral gas in a tiny volume, a technology perfected by ISOLDE at high temperatures. The method should be capable of producing a “table top” storage ring with an accumulation rate in excess of 10 14 8 Li radioactive ion/s. It has however a much more general applicability to many other nuclear reactions.

Experimental verification of neutron phenomenology in lead and transmutation by adiabatic resonance crossing in accelerator driven systems

Energy and space distributions of spallation neutrons (from 2.5 and 3.57 GeV/c CERN proton beams) slowing down in a 3.3 x 3.3 x 3 m3 lead volume and neutron capture rates on long-lived fission fragments 99 Tc and 129 I demonstrate that Adiabatic Resonance Crossing (ARC) can be used to eliminate efficiently such nuclear waste and validate innovative simulation.

Results from the commissioning of the n_TOF spallation neutron source at CERN

Abstract The new neutron time-of-flight facility (n_TOF) has been built at CERN and is now operational. The facility is intended for the measurement of neutron induced cross-sections of relevance to Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) and to fundamental physics. Neutrons are produced by spallation of the 20 GeV /c proton beam, delivered by the Proton Synchrotron (PS), on a massive target of pure lead. A measuring station is placed at ≈185 m from the neutron producing target, allowing high-resolution measurements. The facility was successfully commissioned with two campaigns of measurements, in November 2000 and April 2001. The main interest was concentrated in the physical parameters of the installation (neutron fluence and resolution function), along with the target behavior and various safety-related aspects. These measurements confirmed the expectations from Monte Carlo simulations of the facility, thus allowing to initiate the foreseen physics program.

Simulations and measurements of beam loss patterns at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is designed to collide proton beams of unprecedented energy, in order to extend the frontiers of high-energy particle physics. During the first very successful running period in 2010--2013, the LHC was routinely storing protons at 3.5--4 TeV with a total beam energy of up to 146 MJ, and even higher stored energies are foreseen in the future. This puts extraordinary demands on the control of beam losses. An un-controlled loss of even a tiny fraction of the beam could cause a superconducting magnet to undergo a transition into a normal-conducting state, or in the worst case cause material damage. Hence a multi-stage collimation system has been installed in order to safely intercept high-amplitude beam protons before they are lost elsewhere. To guarantee adequate protection from the collimators, a detailed theoretical understanding is needed. This article presents results of numerical simulations of the distribution of beam losses around the LHC that have leaked out of the collimation system. The studies include tracking of protons through the fields of more than 5000 magnets in the 27 km LHC ring over hundreds of revolutions, and Monte-Carlo simulations of particle-matter interactions both in collimators and machine elements being hit by escaping particles. The simulation results agree typically within a factor 2 with measurements of beam loss distributions from the previous LHC run. Considering the complex simulation, which must account for a very large number of unknown imperfections, and in view of the total losses around the ring spanning over 7 orders of magnitude, we consider this an excellent agreement. Our results give confidence in the simulation tools, which are used also for the design of future accelerators.

Neutron driven nuclear transmutation by adiabatic resonance crossing

The use of accelerator driven system (ADS) like for instance the Energy Amplifier concept (EA) proposed by C. Rubbia and his group might be one of the solutions to solve the energy problem and in particular to answer the question: what could we do with the nuclear waste produced by the present nuclear reactors? We present in this paper the EA concept, which is illustrated by two experiments performed at the CERN-PS facility. One of them is the TARC (Transmutation by Adiabatic Resonance crossing) experiment which is designed to demonstrate the high efficiency offered by the EA to destroy the long-lived fission fragments.

Pulse processing routines for neutron time-of-flight data

A pulse shape analysis framework is described, which was developed for n_TOF-Phase3, the third phase in the operation of the n_TOF facility at CERN. The most notable feature of this new framework is the adoption of generic pulse shape analysis routines, characterized by a minimal number of explicit assumptions about the nature of pulses. The aim of these routines is to be applicable to a wide variety of detectors, thus facilitating the introduction of the new detectors or types of detectors into the analysis framework. The operational details of the routines are suited to the specific requirements of particular detectors by adjusting the set of external input parameters. Pulse recognition, baseline calculation and the pulse shape fitting procedure are described. Special emphasis is put on their computational efficiency, since the most basic implementations of these conceptually simple methods are often computationally inefficient.

Monte Carlo Simulation of the Neutron Time-of-Flight Facility at CERN

The neutron Time of Flight (n_TOF) facility at CERN is a source of neutrons produced by spallation of 20GeV/c protons onto a solid lead target. The out- standing characteristics of this facility (very high intensity, 200 m flight path, wide spectral function) make it an extremely useful tool that provides the neces- sary data for the design and understanding of Accelerator Driven Systems [1-3]. The proton beam is delivered by the CERN-PS [4] which is capable of providing one to four bunches with an intensity of 71012 protons per bunch, within a 14.4 s supercycle, at a momentum of 20 GeV/c.

Radiation protection, radiation safety and radiation shielding assessment of HIE-ISOLDE

The high intensity and energy ISOLDE (HIE-ISOLDE) project is an upgrade to the existing ISOLDE facility at CERN. The foreseen increase in the nominal intensity and the energy of the primary proton beam of the existing ISOLDE facility aims at increasing the intensity of the produced radioactive ion beams (RIBs). The currently existing ISOLDE facility uses the proton beam from the proton-synchrotron booster with an energy of 1.4 GeV and an intensity up to 2 μA. After upgrade (final stage), the HIE-ISOLDE facility is supposed to run at an energy up to 2 GeV and an intensity up to 4 μA. The foreseen upgrade imposes constrains, from the radiation protection and the radiation safety point of view, to the existing experimental and supply areas. Taking into account the upgraded energy and intensity of the primary proton beam, a new assessment of the radiation protection and radiation safety of the HIE-ISOLDE facility is necessary. Special attention must be devoted to the shielding assessment of the beam dumps and of the experimental areas. In this work the state-of-the-art Monte Carlo particle transport simulation program FLUKA was used to perform the computation of the ambient dose equivalent rate distribution and of the particle fluxes in the projected HIE-ISOLDE facility (taking into account the upgrade nominal primary proton beam energy and intensity) and the shielding assessment of the facility, with the aim of identifying in the existing facility (ISOLDE) the critical areas and locations where new or reinforced shielding may be necessary. The consequences of the upgraded proton beam parameters on the operational radiation protection of the facility were studied.

A dedicated tool for PET scanner simulations using FLUKA

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a well-established medical imaging technique. It is based on the detection of pairs of annihilation gamma rays from a beta+-emitting radionuclide, usually inoculated in the body via a biologically active molecule. Apart from its wide-spread use for clinical diagnosis, new applications are proposed. This includes notably the usage of PET for treatment monitoring of radiation therapy with protons and ions. PET is currently the only available technique for non-invasive monitoring of ion beam dose delivery, which was tested in several clinical pilot studies. For hadron-therapy, the distribution of positron emitters, produced by the ion beam, can be analyzed to verify the correct treatment delivery.The adaptation of previous PET scanners to new environments and the necessity of more precise diagnostics by better image quality triggered the development of new PET scanner designs. The use of Monte Carlo (MC) codes is essential in the early stages of the scanner design to simulate the transport of particles and nuclear interactions from therapeutic ion beams or radioisotopes and to predict radiation fields in tissues and radiation emerging from the patient. In particular, range verification using PET is based on the comparison of detected and simulated activity distributions. The accuracy of the MC code for the relevant physics processes is obviously essential for such applications. In this work we present new developments of the physics models with importance for PET monitoring and integrated tools for PET scanner simulations for FLUKA, a fully-integrated MC particle-transport code, which is widely used for an extended range of applications (accelerator shielding, detector and target design, calorimetry, activation, dosimetry, medical physics, radiobiology, . . . ). The developed tools include a PET scanner geometry builder and a dedicated scoring routine for coincident event determination. The geometry builder allows the efficient construction of PET scanners with nearly arbitrary parameters. The scoring output can be saved in standard output formats, including list mode and binary sinogram, which facilitates the processing of the data with external reconstruction algorithms. We also present recent developments of Flair, the GUI for FLUKA, which allow to read DICOM files and convert them into FLUKA voxel geometry in a convenient way.

Transmutation of 99Tc in a low lethargy medium as a function of the neutron energy

In the TARC experiment the differential neutron flux φ(E,r) of a spallation of 2.5 and 3.5 GeV/c proton in large lead block is measured in the range between 0.1 eV and 1.5 MeV. A new technique, using small quantities (less than 0.1 gram) of material, is used for measuring the transmutation rate as a function of neutron energy in the range between 0.1 eV up to a few keV. The method is applied to a target of 86 mg (99Tc) mixed with 1.7 g of Aluminum. From these measurements the energy profile of the capture cross section can be extracted.