In recent years, the interest in high intensity proton beams in excess of several milli-amperes has risen. Potential applications are in neutrino physics, materials and energy research, and isotope production. Continuous wave proton beams of five to ten milli-amperes are now in reach due to advances in accelerator technology and through improved understanding of the beam dynamics. As an example application, we present the proposed IsoDAR experiment, a search for so-called sterile neutrinos and non-standard interaction using the KamLAND detector located in Japan. We present updated sensitivities for this experiment and describe in detail the design of the high intensity proton driver that uses several novel ideas. These are: accelerating H + 2 instead of protons, directly injecting beam into the cyclotron via a radio frequency quadrupole, and carefully matching the beam to achieve so-called vortex motion. The preliminary design holds up well in PIC simulation studies and the injector system is now being constructed, to be commissioned with a 1 MeV/amu test cyclotron.
Standfirst: Jose R. Alonso and colleagues describe technical advances that will allow the proposed IsoDAR cyclotron -developed for neutrino physics research -to produce medical isotopes more efficiently than existing cyclotrons can.
We present a novel machine learning-based approach to generate fast-executing virtual radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) particle accelerators using surrogate modelling. These could potentially be used as on-line feedback tools during beam commissioning and operation, and to optimize the RFQ beam dynamics design prior to construction. Since surrogate models execute orders of magnitude faster than corresponding physics beam dynamics simulations using standard tools like PARMTEQM and RFQGen, the computational complexity of the multi-objective optimization problem reduces significantly. Ultimately, this presents a computationally inexpensive and time efficient method to perform sensitivity studies and an optimization of the crucial RFQ beam output parameters like transmission and emittances. Two different methods of surrogate model creation (polynomial chaos expansion and neural networks) are discussed and the achieved model accuracy is evaluated for different study cases with gradually increasing complexity, ranging from a simple FODO cell example to the full RFQ optimization. We find that variations of the beam input Twiss parameters can be reproduced well. The prediction of the beam with respect to hardware changes, e.g., the electrode modulation, are challenging on the other hand. We discuss possible reasons for that and elucidate nevertheless existing benefits of the applied method to RFQ beam dynamics design.
The IsoDAR collaboration is developing a high-current cyclotron for a neutrino search experiment. Designed to deliver 10 mA of 60 MeV protons, the current and power of this cyclotron far exceed those of existing accelerators, opening new possibilities for the production of radiopharmaceutical isotopes, producing very highactivity samples in very short times. The cyclotron can also be easily configured to deliver ions other than protons including 1 mA of alpha particles at 240 MeV: this flexibility gives a broad reach into new areas of isotope production. We explain how IsoDAR overcomes the beam limits of commercial cyclotrons, and how it could represent the next step in isotope production rates.
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