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At least 181 records · Page 10
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2013

Key elements of space charge compensation on a low energy high intensity beam injector

Space charge effect (SCE) along the beam line will decrease beam quality. Space charge compensation (SCC) with extra gas injection is a high-efficiency method to reduce SCE. In this paper, we will report the experimental results on the beam profile, potential distribution, beam emittance, and beam transmission efficiency of a 35 keV/90 mA H{sup +} beam and a 40 keV/10 mA He{sup +} beam compensated by Ar/Kr. The influence of gas type, gas flow, and injection location will be discussed. Emphasis is laid on the consideration of SCC when designing and commissioning a high intensity ion beam injector. Based on measured data, a new definition of space charge compensation degree is proposed.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Capture cavity cryomodule for quantum beam experiment at KEK superconducting RF test facility

A capture cavity cryomodule was fabricated and used in a beam line for quantum beam experiments at the Superconducting RF Test Facility (STF) of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan. The cryomodule is about 4 m long and contains two nine-cell cavities. The cross section is almost the same as that of the STF cryomodules that were fabricated to develop superconducting RF cavities for the International Linear Collider. An attempt was made to reduce the large deflection of the helium gas return pipe (GRP) that was observed in the STF cryomodules during cool-down and warm-up. This paper briefly describes the structure and cryogenic performance of the captures cavity cryomodule, and also reports the measured displacement of the GRP and the cavity-containing helium vessels during regular operation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Combining tissue-phantom ratios to provide a beam-quality specifier for flattening filter free photon beams

Purpose: There are currently several commercially available radiotherapy treatment units without a flattening filter in the beam line. Unflattened photon beams have an energy and lateral fluence distribution that is different from conventional beams and, thus, their attenuation properties differ. As a consequence, for flattening filter free (FFF) beams, the relationship between the beam-quality specifier TPR{sub 20,10} and the Spencer–Attix restricted water-to-air mass collision stopping-power ratios, (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water}, may have to be refined in order to be used with equivalent accuracy as for beams with a flattening filter. The purpose of this work was twofold. First, to study the relationship between TPR{sub 20,10} and (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} for FFF beams, where the flattening filter has been replaced by a metal plate as in most clinical FFF beams. Second, to investigate the potential of increasing the accuracy in determining (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} by adding another beam-quality metric, TPR{sub 10,5}. The relationship between (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} and %dd(10){sub x} for beams with and without a flattening filter was also included in this study. Methods: A total of 24 realistic photon beams (10 with and 14 without a flattening filter) from three different treatment units have been used to calculate (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water}, TPR{sub 20,10}, and TPR{sub 10,5} using the EGSnrc Monte Carlo package. The relationship between (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} and the dual beam-quality specifier TPR{sub 20,10} and TPR{sub 10,5} was described by a simple bilinear equation. The relationship between the photon beam-quality specifier %dd(10){sub x} used in the AAPM’s TG-51 dosimetry protocol and (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} was also investigated for the beams used in this study, by calculating the photon component of the percentage depth dose at 10 cm depth with SSD 100 cm. Results: The calculated (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} for beams without a flattening filter was 0.3% lower, on average, than for beams with a flattening filter and comparable TPR{sub 20,10}. Using the relationship in IAEA, TRS-398 resulted in a root mean square deviation (RMSD) of 0.0028 with a maximum deviation of 0.0043 (0.39%) from Monte Carlo calculated values. For all beams in this study, the RMSD between the proposed model and the Monte Carlo calculated values was 0.0006 with a maximum deviation of 0.0013 (0.1%). Using an earlier proposed relationship [Xiong and Rogers, Med. Phys. 35, 2104–2109 (2008)] between %dd(10){sub x} and (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} gave a RMSD of 0.0018 with a maximum deviation of 0.0029 (0.26%) for all beams in this study (compared to RMSD 0.0015 and a maximum deviation of 0.0048 (0.47%) for the relationship used in AAPM TG-51 published by Almond et al. [Med. Phys. 26, 1847–1870 (1999)]). Conclusions: Using TPR{sub 20,10} as a beam-quality specifier, for the flattening filter free beams used in this study, gave a maximum difference of 0.39% between (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} predicted using IAEA TRS-398 and Monte Carlo calculations. An additional parameter for determining (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} has been presented. This parameter is easy to measure; it requires only an additional dose measurement at 5 cm depth with SSD 95 cm, and provides information for accurate determination of the (L{sup -}/ρ){sub air}{sup water} ratio for beams both with and without a flattening filter at the investigated energies.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

Comparison of film measurements and Monte Carlo simulations of dose delivered with very high-energy electron beams in a polystyrene phantom

Purpose: To measure radiation dose in a water-equivalent medium from very high-energy electron (VHEE) beams and make comparisons to Monte Carlo (MC) simulation results. Methods: Dose in a polystyrene phantom delivered by an experimental VHEE beam line was measured with Gafchromic films for three 50 MeV and two 70 MeV Gaussian beams of 4.0–6.9 mm FWHM and compared to corresponding MC-simulated dose distributions. MC dose in the polystyrene phantom was calculated with the EGSnrc/BEAMnrc and DOSXYZnrc codes based on the experimental setup. Additionally, the effect of 2% beam energy measurement uncertainty and possible non-zero beam angular spread on MC dose distributions was evaluated. Results: MC simulated percentage depth dose (PDD) curves agreed with measurements within 4% for all beam sizes at both 50 and 70 MeV VHEE beams. Central axis PDD at 8 cm depth ranged from 14% to 19% for the 5.4–6.9 mm 50 MeV beams and it ranged from 14% to 18% for the 4.0–4.5 mm 70 MeV beams. MC simulated relative beam profiles of regularly shaped Gaussian beams evaluated at depths of 0.64 to 7.46 cm agreed with measurements to within 5%. A 2% beam energy uncertainty and 0.286° beam angular spread corresponded to a maximum 3.0% and 3.8% difference in depth dose curves of the 50 and 70 MeV electron beams, respectively. Absolute dose differences between MC simulations and film measurements of regularly shaped Gaussian beams were between 10% and 42%. Conclusions: The authors demonstrate that relative dose distributions for VHEE beams of 50–70 MeV can be measured with Gafchromic films and modeled with Monte Carlo simulations to an accuracy of 5%. The reported absolute dose differences likely caused by imperfect beam steering and subsequent charge loss revealed the importance of accurate VHEE beam control and diagnostics.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2014

Beam-Induced Effects and Radiological Issues in High-Intensity High-Energy Fixed Target Experiments

The next generation of accelerators for Megawatt proton and heavy-ion beams moves us into a completely new domain of extreme specific energies of up to 0.1 MJ/g (Megajoule/gram) and specific power up to 1 TW/g (Terawatt/gram) in beam interactions with matter. This paper is focused on deleterious effects of controlled and uncontrolled impacts of high-intensity beams on components of beam-lines, target stations, beam absorbers, shielding and environment. Two new experiments at Fermilab are taken as an example. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) will explore the interactions and transformations of the world's highest-intensity neutrino beam by sending it from Fermilab more than 1,000 kilometers through the Earth's mantle to a large liquid argon detector. The Mu2e experiment is devoted to studies of the conversion of a negative muon to electron in the field of a nucleus without emission of neutrinos.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Beam Transport Testing for the Production Accelerator Arrangement

The beam transport system is designed to deliver an electron beam from the accelerator to the target. The design of the beam line depends on beam parameter (energy, energy spread, etc.) and target geometry. Elements of the beam transport system should provide transportation, focusing, and positioning of the beam onto the target surface.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Harmonic Slip-Stacking

Slip-stacking is a particle acceleration technique used at Fermilab to increase Main Injector intensity by combining two beams at the cost of longitudinal beam quality.In a conventional beam line, a single beam is typically accelerated and delivered to the experimental area without combining it with another beam

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2014

STATUS OF NEW 2.5 MEV TEST FACILITY AT SNS

A new 2.5MeV beam test facility is being built at SNS. It consists of a 65 keV H- ion source, a 2.5MeV RFQ, a beam line with various beam diagnostics and a 6 kW beam dump. The facility is capable of producing one-ms-long pulses at 60Hz repetition rate with up to 50mA peak current. The commissioning with reduced average beam power is planned for fall 2014 to verify operation of all systems. The full power operation is scheduled to begin in 2015. The status of the facility will be presented as well as a discussion of the future R&D program.

Aleksandrov, Alexander V↗
DOE OSTI2011

Low-Energy Run of Fermilab Electron Cooler's Beam Generation System

In the context of the evaluation of possibly using the Fermilab Electron Cooler for the proposed low-energy RHIC run at BNL, operating the cooler at 1.6 MeV electron beam energy was tested in a short beam line configuration. The main conclusion of this feasibility study is that the cooler's beam generation system is suitable for BNL needs. The beam recirculation was stable for all tested parameters. In particular, a beam current of 0.38 A was achieved with the cathode magnetic field up to the maximum value presently available of 250 G. The energy ripple was measured to be 40 eV. A striking difference with running the 4.3 MeV beam (nominal for operation at FNAL) is that no unprovoked beam recirculation interruptions were observed. Electron cooling proposed to increase the luminosity of the RHIC collider for heavy ion beam energies below 10 GeV/nucleon [1] needs a good quality, 0.9-5 MeV electron beam. Preliminary design studies indicate that the scheme of the Recycler's electron cooler at FNAL is suitable for low-energy RHIC cooling and most parts of the cooler can be re-used after the end of the Tevatron Run II. To analyze issues related to the generation of the electron beam in the energy recovery mode and to gain experience with the beam transport at lower beam energy, a dedicated study was performed at FNAL with a beam run through a short beam line (so called U-bend). This report summarizes our findings and observations in the course of the measurements.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Spatially resolved measurements of electron cyclotron resonance ion source beam profile characteristics

Simulations predict that the concentric rings and the triangular structures in the profiles of strongly focused ion beams that are found in different experiments should be dominated by ion species with the same or at least similar m/q-ratio. To verify these theoretical predictions we have tuned our ECR ion source to deliver a beam consisting of multiple ion species whose particular m/q-depending focusing ranges from weakly focused to overfocused. We then recorded spatially resolved charge-state distributions of the beam profile at characteristic positions in the plane perpendicular to the beam line. The results validate theoretical predictions and are summarized in this paper. To achieve the required beam profile characteristics we moved the extraction along the beam line to achieve stronger focusing than by only changing the extraction voltage. To fit the regions of interest of the beam profile into the transmission area of the sector magnet, we steered the beam by moving the extraction in the plane perpendicular to the beam axis. The results of both investigations, beam focusing and beam steering by using a 3D-movable extraction, are also reported in this paper. A brief overview of the new beam monitor extensively used during these measurements, the Faraday cup array, is also given.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Radiological Consequences of Beam Loss on Beamline Front End Collimator during Top-off Injection into the Storage Ring

The primary radiological safety concern for the top-off injection, with the beam line front end safety shutters open, is the scenario where electrons could be conveyed down to the beam line through the front end due to the erroneous combination of lattice magnetic field settings and beam energy. It is of paramount importance to ensure that such events are of remote possibility. Particle tracking simulations by the NSLS-II Accelerator Physicists have shown that by a set of interlocking requirements of the lattice magnetic fields and by the implementation of physical apertures, the errant electron beam can be confined to the front end components within the storage ring.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2015

The CNAO dose delivery system for modulated scanning ion beam radiotherapy

Purpose: This paper describes the system for the dose delivery currently used at the Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica (CNAO) for ion beam modulated scanning radiotherapy. Methods: CNAO Foundation, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and University of Torino have designed, built, and commissioned a dose delivery system (DDS) to monitor and guide ion beams accelerated by a dedicated synchrotron and to distribute the dose with a full 3D scanning technique. Protons and carbon ions are provided for a wide range of energies in order to cover a sizable span of treatment depths. The target volume, segmented in several layers orthogonally to the beam direction, is irradiated by thousands of pencil beams which must be steered and held to the prescribed positions until the prescribed number of particles has been delivered. For the CNAO beam lines, these operations are performed by the DDS. The main components of this system are two independent beam monitoring detectors, called BOX1 and BOX2, interfaced with two control systems performing the tasks of real-time fast and slow control, and connected to the scanning magnets and the beam chopper. As a reaction to any condition leading to a potential hazard, a DDS interlock signal is sent to the patient interlock system which immediately stops the irradiation. The essential tasks and operations performed by the DDS are described following the data flow from the treatment planning system through the end of the treatment delivery. Results: The ability of the DDS to guarantee a safe and accurate treatment was validated during the commissioning phase by means of checks of the charge collection efficiency, gain uniformity of the chambers, and 2D dose distribution homogeneity and stability. A high level of reliability and robustness has been proven by three years of system activity needing rarely more than regular maintenance and working with 100% uptime. Four identical and independent DDS devices have been tested showing comparable performances and are presently in use on the CNAO beam lines for clinical activity. Conclusions: The dose delivery system described in this paper is one among the few worldwide existing systems to operate ion beam for modulated scanning radiotherapy. At the time of writing, it has been used to treat more than 350 patients and it has proven to guide and control the therapeutic pencil beams reaching performances well above clinical requirements. In particular, in terms of dose accuracy and stability, daily quality assurance measurements have shown dose deviations always lower than the acceptance threshold of 5% and 2.5%, respectively.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2013

Handling Radioactive Waste from the Proton Accelerator Facility at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) - Always Surprising? - 13320

The Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) is the largest national research centre in Switzerland. Its multidisciplinary research is dedicated to a wide field in natural science and technology as well as particle physics. In this context, PSI is operating, amongst others, a large proton accelerator facility since more than 30 years. In two cyclotrons, protons are accelerated to high speeds and then guided along roughly 100 m of beam line to three different target stations to produce secondary particles like mesons and neutrons for experiments and a separately beam line for UCN. The protons induce spallation processes in the target materials, and also at other beam loss points along the way, with emission of protons, neutrons, hydrogen, tritium, helium, heavier fragments and fission processes. In particular the produced neutrons, due to their large penetration depth, will then interact also with the surrounding materials. These interactions of radiation with matter lead to activation and partly to contamination of machine components and the surrounding infrastructures. Maintenance, operation and decommissioning of installations generate inevitably substantial amounts of radioactive operational and dismantling waste like targets, magnets, collimators, shielding (concrete, steel) and of course secondary waste. To achieve an optimal waste management strategy for interim storage or final disposal, radioactive waste has to be characterized, sorted and treated. This strategy is based on radiation protection demands, raw waste properties (size, material, etc.), and requirements to reduce the volume of waste, mainly for legal and economical reasons. In addition, the radiological limitations for transportation of the waste packages to a future disposal site have to be taken into account, as well as special regulatory demands. The characterization is a task of the waste producer. The conditioning processes and quality checks for radioactive waste packages are part of an accredited waste management process of PSI, especially of the Section Dismantling and Waste Management. Strictly proven and accepted methods needed to be developed and enhanced for safe treatment, transport, conditioning and storage. But in the field of waste from research activities, individual and new solutions have to be found in an increasingly growing administrative environment. Furthermore, a wide variety of components, with a really large inventory of radioactive nuclides, has to be handled. And there are always surprising challenges concerning the unusual materials or the nuclide inventory. In case of the operational and dismantling radioactive accelerator waste, the existing conditioning methods are in the process of a continuous enhancement - technically and administratively. The existing authorized specifications of conditioning processes have to be extended to optimize and fully describe the treatment of the inevitably occurring radioactive waste from the accelerator facility. Additional challenges are the changes with time concerning the legal and regulatory requirements - or do we have to consider it as business as usual? This paper gives an overview of the current practices in radioactive waste management and decommissioning of the existing operational accelerator waste. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2015

WE-EF-BRA-06: Feasibility of Spatially Modulated Proton Beams for Small Animal Research

Purpose: To investigate the feasibility of proton minibeam radiotherapy (pMBRT) for small animal research. The motivation is to explore with protons the extraordinary normal tissue sparing effects to spatially modulated beams as observed on high flux synchrotron beam lines. We hypothesized that we can design a multi-slit collimator for our proton beam line to produce planar-parallel dose profiles with high modulation in the entrance region and homogenous dose coverage in the overlap of the Bragg peaks. Methods: The high dose rate 50 MeV research proton beamline at the University of Washington was modeled using the TOol for PArticle Simulation (TOPAS) Monte Carlo package. A brass collimator was implemented to generate proton minibeams. The collimator consists of an array of 2 cm long slits to cover an area of 2×2 cm{sup 2}. The slit widths (0.1–1 mm), center-to-center (ctc) distances (1–3 mm) and collimator thickness (1–7 cm) were varied to evaluate the effect on dose rate, the peak-to-valley dose ratios (PVDR) and the change of penumbra and peak width (FWHM) with depth. Results: The Bragg peak was at a depth of ∼21 mm. The penumbra and FWHM remained relatively constant to a depth of about 10–15 mm. The PVDR ranged from 1.6 to 26 and the dose rate dropped exponentially with collimator thickness. A uniform dose can be achieved at depth with slightly compromised PVDRs and dose rate. Conclusion: The technical realization of pMBRT is feasible. The simulations have shown that it is possible to obtain uniform dose at depth while modulation is maintained on the entrance side. While the simulated beam widths are larger than on synchrotron generated microbeams the dosimetric advantage could avoid having to interlace two microbeams to achieve uniform dose in the target. The next steps are to build a collimator and verify the simulations experimentally.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

Overview of Hall D Complex

Hall D is a new experimental hall at Jefferson Lab, designed for experiments with a photon beam. The primary motivation for Hall D is the GlueX experiment [1,2], dedicated to meson spectroscopy. The Hall D complex consists of: An electron beam line used to extract the 5.5-pass electrons from the accelerator into the Tagger Hall. The designed beam energy is E e = 12 GeV;The Tagger Hall, where the electron beam passes through a thin radiator (~0.01% R.L.) and is deflected into the beam dump. The electrons that lost >30% of their energy in the radiator are detected with scintillator hodoscopes providing a ~0.1% energy resolution for the tagged photons. Aligned diamond radiators allow to produce linearly polarized photons via the Coherent Bremsstrahlung. The beam dump is limited to 60 kW (5 µA at 12 GeV); The Collimator Cave contains a collimator for the photon beam and dipole magnets downstream in order to remove charged particles. The 3.4 mm diameter collimator, located about 75 m downstream of the radiator, selects the central cone of the photon beam increasing its average linear polarization, up to ~40%in the coherent peak at 9 GeV; Hall D contains several elements of the photon beam line, and themain spectrometer. A Pair Spectrometer consists of a thin converter, a dipole magnet, and a two-arm detector used to measure the energy spectrum of the photon beam. The main spectrometer is based on a 2-T superconducting solenoid, 4 m long and 1.85 m bore diameter. The liquid hydrogen target is located in the front part the solenoid. The charged tracks are detected with a set of drift chambers; photons are detected with two electromagnetic calorimeters. There are also scintillator hodoscopes for triggering and time-of-flight measurements. The spectrometer is nearly hermetic in an angular range of 1° < θ < 120 •. The momentum resolution is σ p /p ~ 1 ₋ ₋3% depending on the polar angle θ. The energy resolution of the electromagnetic calorimeters is about 7% at 1 GeV.

Chudakov, Eugene A.↗
DOE OSTI2011

Magnetic Measurement Results of the LCLS Undulator Quadrupoles

This note details the magnetic measurements and the magnetic center fiducializations that were performed on all of the thirty-six LCLS undulator quadrupoles. Temperature rise, standardization reproducibility, vacuum chamber effects and magnetic center reproducibility measurements are also presented. The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) undulator beam line has 33 girders, each with a LCLS undulator quadrupole which focuses and steers the beam through the beam line. Each quadrupole has main quadrupole coils, as well as separate horizontal and vertical trim coils. Thirty-six quadrupoles, thirty-three installed and three spares were, manufactured for the LCLS undulator system and all were measured to confirm that they met requirement specifications for integrated gradient, harmonics and for magnetic center shifts after current changes. The horizontal and vertical dipole trims of each quadrupole were similarly characterized. Each quadrupole was also fiducialized to its magnetic center. All characterizing measurements on the undulator quads were performed with their mirror plates on and after a standardization of three cycles from -6 to +6 to -6 amps. Since the undulator quadrupoles could be used as a focusing or defocusing magnet depending on their location, all quadrupoles were characterized as focusing and as defocusing quadrupoles. A subset of the undulator quadrupoles were used to verify that the undulator quadrupole design met specifications for temperature rise, standardization reproducibility and magnetic center reproducibility after splitting. The effects of the mirror plates on the undulator quadrupoles were also measured.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Development of an x-ray Talbot-Lau moiré deflectometer for fast density profile measurements of dense plasmas generated by beam-target interactions

We report that for the first time an x-ray Talbot-Lau moiré deflectometer is being developed that will use a flash tube source and fast detector for dynamic density gradient measurements. In Talbot-Lau moiré deflectometry, an x-ray grating makes an image of itself on a second grating (the Talbot effect) to produce a moiré pattern on a detector. The test object is placed between these gratings, with variations in index of refraction changing the pattern. A third grating in front of an incoherent x-ray source produces an array of coherent sources. With a 150 kV x-ray flash tube as the source, the gratings are placed in a glancing angle setup for performance at ~60 keV. The detector is a gated CCD with a fast scintillator for x-ray conversion. This diagnostic, designed for the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility (DARHT) at Los Alamos National Laboratory, measures the density profile of dense plasma plumes ejected from beam-target interactions. DARHT has two high-current, pulsed, inductive linear electron accelerators with bremsstrahlung targets at the end of each beam line to create 2-D radiographic images of hydrodynamic tests. One multi-pulse accelerator has up to four beam pulses striking the same target within 2 μs. Computer simulations that model target evolution and ejected material between pulses are used to design these targets for optimal radiographic performance; the x-ray deflectometer will directly measure density gradients in the ejected plumes and provide the first experimental constraints to these models. During the first year, currently underway, the diagnostic systems are being designed. In year two, the flash tube and fast detector will be deployed at DARHT for radiographic imaging while the deflectometer is built and tested on the bench with a continuous source. In year three, the fast deflectometer will be installed on DARHT and density measurements will be performed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗