Materials adopted for particle beam windows in relevant experimental facilities

Abstract

A beam vacuum window is a thin interface of separation between a volume under vacuum and a volume at a higher pressure traversed by particle beams. Their application is not only limited to particle accelerators, where they are typically installed inside the beamline to separate vacuum sectors, but also extends to other fields of nuclear research and to high-power hadron beam applications, such as spallation neutron sources and accelerator-driven systems. The main issue concerning the beam window technology resides intrinsically in the dual role of these components: the thickness of the window is supposed to be as thin as possible to allow the passage of the particles through matter with minimal interaction but, at the same time, enough resistant to maintain the required differential pressure between the two environments.