Behaviour of polarized ammonia in an intense electron beam

Polarized target experiments with intense particle beams suffer from the depolarization effects due to radiation damage and beam heating. The local depolarization of the target material 14NH3 at the electron beam spot has been investigated by hitting it with 1.2 GeV electrons. This beam has been delivered from the electron stretcher accelerator ELSA of the Bonn University. The polarized target consists of a 4 T superconducting magnet with a Helmholtz configuration and a 4He evaporation cryostat which operates at a temperature around 1 K. The heating of the target chips by the electron beam has been measured up to an intensity of 70 nA using a specific set-up of the nuclear magnetic resonance apparatus for the polarization measurements. ((orig.))