High power electrostatic beam splitter for a proton beamline

Abstract

The High Intensity Proton Accelerator facility (HIPA) delivers a 590 MeV cw (50.6 MHz) proton beam with up to 1.4 MW beam power (2.4 mA) to spallation and meson production targets serving particle physics experiments and material research. The main accelerator is the ring cyclotron, an isochronous proton machine accelerating an injected 72 MeV beam to a final 590 MeV. A few meters downstream of the ring cyclotron, an electrostatic beam splitter was installed in the 1980s and originally designed to peel off from a 200 μA beam up to 20 μA (12 kW beam power). Future initiatives will also make use of the splitter. Specifically, as part of the Isotope and Muon Production using Advanced Cyclotron and Target technologies (IMPACT) upgrade project, Targeted Alpha Tumour Therapy and Other Oncological Solutions (TATTOOS), an online isotope separation facility will allow to produce promising radionuclides for diagnosis and therapy of cancer in quantities sufficient for clinical studies. The TATTOOS facility includes a dedicated beamline intended to operate at a beam intensity of 100 μA (60 kW beam power), requiring continuous splitting of the high-power main beam via the splitter. As a step forward toward reaching the desired beam intensity, a beam study was carried out to test the viability of the existing splitter for TATTOOS. The results of this study show that a record of 90 μA (53 kW beam power) was peeled off a horizontally and vertically enlarged beam by the splitter. The successful beam strategy employed during the study as well as the results of several key measurements are presented in this paper, with particular emphasis on diagnostic measurements. Additionally, to support the measurements, a computational model of the splitter has been implemented using Monte Carlo simulation tools, including realistic geometry, electrostatic fields, beam optics, and power deposition calculations. Overall, the results of this paper show that through the combination of beam measurements and simulations, the existing splitter can be used to reach the 100-μA beam intensity requirement for TATTOOS.