TRIUMF-ISACII Radioactive Beam Facility

 
The lower pole face of the TRIUMF Cyclotron which is the world's largest cyclotron. The 100 microampere proton current feeds into the ISACII facility shown on the right.
 

TRIUMF is the world's largest cyclotron that is used to accelerate intense beams of protons up to 530 MeV. It has been used since 1974 to create meson beams for nuclear physics research. The size of the lower magnet pole face is shown in the picture above.

The Isotope Separator and Accelerator radioactive beam facility ISACII at TRIUMF accelerates radioactive nuclei that have been created by the intense proton beams from TRIUMF. These radioactive beams are used to probe the structure of unexplored nuclei far from the valley of stability, manifesting surprising new modes of nuclear structure. The first stage, low energy ISAC1 accelerator now is producing light mass radioactive beams at low energies for research. The full scientific program will blossom summer 2007 once the ISACII facility is fully operational providing beams up to the Coulomb barrier.

The first stage of the ISAC-II superconducting linac was completed in early 2006. It consists of five medium-beta cryomodules each with four quarter wave superconducting cavities. The linac is capable of producing continuously variable energy beams up to a maximum of 5MeV/u for A/q = 6. Higher beam energies can be obtained up to ~ 10 MeV/u for A/q =2. Until the charge state booster is installed in January 2008, only radioactive beams with A < 30 will be accelerated. The linac was commissioned with stable beams in May 2006. Two experimental beamlines are presen tly under construction at ISAC-II. A general purpose beamline is scheduled for completion in Oct 2006, and a dedicated experimental beamline for the full TIGRESS array is scheduled for completion in April 2007.