Ion accelerator and associated developmental activities at IUAC, Delhi

A vertical 15UD Pelletron electrostatic accelerator having tested terminal voltage up to 16 MV using compressed geometry tubes has been in operation at Inter University Accelerator Center for more than two decades. It has special features like off-set quadruples in the high voltage terminal and SF6 gas based pneumatically operated four shafts to restrict the oscillations of the terminal of the accelerator columns in case of earthquake. It has been providing various ion beams from proton to lead in the energy range varying from a few tens of MeV to 270 MeV for scheduled experiments. Two superconducting linac booster modules having niobium quarter wave resonators have been developed. They are fully operational for regular experiments. A new type of high temperature superconducting electron cyclotron resonance ion source (HTS-ECRIS) was designed, fabricated and installed successfully. It has been in regular operation as a part of alternate high current injector (HCI) system to inject highly charged ions into the superconducting linac. A radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) accelerator is being developed to accelerate highly charged particles (A/Q ∼ 6) from HTS-ECRIS to an energy of about 180 keV/A. The beam will then be accelerated further by drift tube linacs (DTL) to the required velocity to inject the ion beams to the existing superconducting linac booster. A low energy ion beam facility having permanent magnet ECRIS on high voltage platform and a 1.7 MV Pelletron are developed for regular experiments. Two niobium single spoke resonators for Project-X at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) optimized for v/c=0.22 d operating at 325 MHz are being constructed. Details of various developmental activities related to the ion accelerator and associated systems will be presented. (author)