Milestones:First 500 MeV Proton Beam from the TRIUMF Cyclotron, 1974
Citation
At 3:30 pm on 15 December 1974, the first 500 MeV proton beam was extracted from the TRIUMF cyclotron. Since then, TRIUMF has used proton beams from its cyclotron (and secondary beams of pions, muons, neutrons and radioactive ions produced in its experimental halls) to conduct pioneering studies that have advanced nuclear physics, particle physics, molecular and materials science, and nuclear medicine.
The Milestone plaque can be viewed on a wall outside the cyclotron main control room at TRIUMF Meson Facility, 4004 Wesbrook MallVancouver, BC V6T 2A3, Canada. (The first successful beam extraction was manually controlled from the main console in that room.)
Significance
TRIUMF is Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. It is owned and operated as a joint venture by a consortium of Canadian universities. Its operations are supported by the Government of Canada through a contribution from the National Research Council Canada while capital funds for buildings are provided by the Government of British Columbia.
TRIUMF's mission is:
- To make discoveries that address the most compelling questions in particle physics, nuclear physics, nuclear medicine, and materials science;
- To act as Canada’s steward for the advancement of particle accelerators and detection technologies; and
- To transfer knowledge, train highly skilled personnel, and commercialize research for the economic, social, environmental, and health benefit of all Canadians.
An aerial photo of the TRIUMF Laboratory is shown below. More information concerning the TRIUMF Laboratory can be found at http://www.triumf.ca
The 500 MeV Cyclotron
The heart of the TRIUMF Laboratory is the 500 MeV cyclotron that was conceived, designed, constructed and commissioned between 1965 and 1974. The events leading up to extraction of the first 500 MeV proton beam from the cyclotron are described in:
J.R. Richardson, E.W. Blackmore, G. Dutto, C.J. Kost, G.H. MacKenzie, and M.K. Craddock, "Production of simultaneous, variable energy beams from the TRIUMF cyclotron," IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. NS-22, no. 3, pp. 1402-7, Jun. 1975.
and in a retrospective that was prepared for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the event:
M.K. Craddock, "The First Beam - A Whirlwind Visual History - and Prehistory," Annual General Meeting of the TRIUMF Users’ Group, 13 December 1999.
Compared to the first and second generation of cyclotrons that provided much lower beam energies and intensities, the physical size of the 500 MeV cyclotron is truly impressive. The main magnet is 18 metres in diameter and weighs 4000 tons. The 23 MHz main RF amplifier delivers almost 1 million watts of power in order to develop 200 kV across the accelerating gap. The photo below was taken during a maintenance period with the lid of the cyclotron's vacuum tank raised. The lone figure in the centre of the photo gives a sense of scale.
The sheer scale of the design and construction effort required TRIUMF staff and contractors to develop revolutionary computer-assisted design, modelling, measurement and tuning technologies in an era dominated by mainframes and minicomputers. Some of these codes, e.g., ACCSIM, a synchrotron beam simulation code, and PHYSICA, a data analysis and plotting code, continue to be widely used, both within TRIUMF and at other laboratories.
Because of its size, TRIUMF was one of the first particle accelerators to employ a software-based supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system rather than direct linkage of cyclotron and beamline components to a hardware-based control panel.
By providing intermediate energy proton beams (i.e., beam energies greater than 100 MeV but less than 1 GeV) that are two orders of magnitude more intense than were previously available, the TRIUMF cyclotron (and its two sister meson factories in the United States and Switzerland) have revolutionized nuclear physics, particle physics, molecular and materials science, and nuclear medicine.
The quality of the initial design and engineering and the significance of the result are underscored by the longevity of the TRIUMF cyclotron. Thirty-five years after the first 500 MeV proton beam was extracted, the cyclotron is still the main engine of TRIUMF’s world-leading research program which currently includes meson physics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, nuclear medicine and irradiation services for industry.
In the 1980s, TRIUMF proposed to use the 500 MeV cyclotron to inject proton beams into a complex of storage rings and synchrotrons (often referred to as the KAON Factory) that would raise the proton beam energy to 30 GeV and yield the most intense high energy proton beams in the world - about 100 times the particle flux of existing machines. Details are described in many publications, including:
M.K. Craddock, "The TRIUMF Kaon Factory" in Proc. 1991 IEEE Particle Accelerator Conference, 6-9 May 1991, pp. 57 - 61.
KAON is both the name of the high energy K-mesons that the accelerator complex would have made and an acronym that refers to the entire suite of particles that would have been produced, including K-mesons, Anti-protons, Other hadrons and Neutrinos.
Although the KAON project was unable to secure the international investment required to proceed to full construction and was eventually shelved in the mid-1990s, the intense development effort prepared the TRIUMF Laboratory to take on other ambitious projects in the 1990s and 2000s. Foremost among these is ISAC (Isotope Separation and Acceleration), a facility in which a proton beam from the 500 MeV cyclotron is used to produce beams of exotic isotopes which are further accelerated using linear accelerators. The facility allows researchers to study the properties and structure of these exotic isotopes.
TRIUMF is contributing the skills and knowledge that it has developed during the past forty years to other labs. It has provided accelerator and beam-line components to facilities such as the Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA) at DESY in Hamburg, the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. It has also provided detectors and other equipment used in the ATLAS detector employed by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the T2K (Tokai-to-Kamioka) neutrino oscillation experiment in Japan.
TRIUMF, in partnership with MDS Nordion, uses proton beams from the main cyclotron and four smaller cyclotrons to produce radioisotopes for use in medical imaging and diagnostics. The recent decision to fund Advanced Applied Physics Solutions (AAPS) under the Canadian Centres of Excellence in Commercialization and Research program paves the way to further application of TRIUMF-based discoveries and methods in ways that directly benefit society.
Distinguishing features or characteristics of this work
TRIUMF is the world's largest cyclotron, and one of only five intermediate-energy high-intensity accelerators in the world. The TRIUMF design team was among the first to adopt the use of H- ions to simplify beam extraction and the use of an AVF (azimuthally varying field) main magnet to permit both isochronous acceleration and proper focusing of the H- ions even as they reach relativistic velocities. They also pioneered the simultaneous extraction of multiple (up to 4) beams at independently variable energies (70-520 MeV).
(H- ion beams can be easily extracted from the cyclotron by passing them through a stripping foil that removes the two electrons from each ion. If the foil is correctly positioned, the resulting proton beam simply curves in the opposite direction, out of the cyclotron's beam port and into the beamline. The fragility of H- ions limits the magnetic field strength that can be used, accounting for the large size of the cyclotron.)
Unlike the world's other four intermediate-energy high-intensity accelerators (the two other meson factories located at the Paul Scherrer Institut near Zurich and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the SNS linear accelerator located near Oak Ridge, TN and the ISIS synchrotron located in Oxfordshire, UK, respectively), the TRIUMF cyclotron can deliver multiple variable-energy and full-energy proton beams simultaneously with a 100% macroscopic duty cycle.
The high intensity of the beam allows the cyclotron to serve as the driver for multiple experiments within the course of a week. The TRIUMF cyclotron’s ability to provide steady, intense and reliable energy beams in a flexible manner has also allowed the facility to become a world leader in providing beams of exotic isotopes using the "isotope separation online" technique.
References
Craddock, "The TRIUMF Kaon Factory" in Proc. 1991 IEEE Particle Accelerator Conference, 6-9 May 1991, pp. 57 - 61.
M.K. Craddock, "The First Beam - A Whirlwind Visual History - and Prehistory," Annual General Meeting of the TRIUMF Users’ Group, 13 December 1999.
J.R. Richardson, E.W. Blackmore, G. Dutto, C.J. Kost, G.H. MacKenzie, and M.K. Craddock, "Production of simultaneous, variable energy beams from the TRIUMF cyclotron," IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. NS-22, no. 3, pp. 1402-7, Jun. 1975.
Acknowledgements
This nomination was prepared by:
Prof. Dave Michelson, University of British Columbia
Prof. Mike Craddock, University of British Columbia
Dr. Tim Meyer, TRIUMF,
Dr. Ewart Blackmore, TRIUMF
Proposals and Nominations
Milestone-Proposal:First 500 MeV proton beam from the worlds largest cyclotron - Proposal, created October 5th, 2009
Milestone-Nomination:First 500 MeV proton beam from the worlds largest cyclotron - Nomination, created January 8th, 2010
