Facilities:

UK 7-MV Van de Graaff Accelerator

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The UK 7-MV Van de Graaff accelerator is capable of producing pulsed beams of protons, deuterons, 3He, and 4He at energies up to 7 MeV. The beam is pulsed at a frequency of 1.875 MHz and can also be bunched in time such that each pulse has a FWHM of ~1 ns.

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Our machine accelerates positively charged ions. These ions are created by applying a radio-frequency electric field to a gas of the desired particle. This creates a plasma of positively charged ions which can be seen in the picture above. In this case, hydrogen gas was present in the source bottle creating a proton plasma.

pulsing housing

After leaving the source bottle, the ions are focused, pulsed, and bunched. The schematic above depicts the various elements necessary to accomplish this task. The ions are then further accelerated down the column of the machine and enter a magnet which is used to select the beam energy and bend it 90° such that it travels horizontally down the beamline. The acceleration column, analyzing magnet, and beamline are shown below.

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