Heavy ion accelerator and associated development activities at IUAC

A vertical 15UD Pelletron electrostatic tandem accelerator having highest terminal voltage tested up to 16 MV has been in regular operation at Inter-University Accelerator Center (IUAC) for more than two decades. It has been providing consistently various ion beams in the energy range from a few tens of MeV to 270MeV for scheduled experiments. A superconducting linear accelerator (LINAC) booster module having eight niobium quarter wave resonators has been designed, fabricated and installed successfully. It is fully operational for scheduled experiments. The LINAC module has been tested and used to accelerate energetic heavy ion beams from 15 UD Pelletron. A new type of high temperature superconducting electron cyclotron resonance ion source (HTS-ECRlS) has been designed, fabricated and installed successfully. lt has been in regular operation as future source of highly charged ions having higher beam current for the alternate high current injector (HCI) system for the superconducting LINAC. A radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) accelerator is being developed to accelerate highly charged particles (A/Q ∼ 6) from HTS-ECRIS to energy of 180 keV/u. The beam will then be accelerated further by drift tube linacs (DTL) to the required velocity for injection of the ion beams in to the existing superconducting LINAC booster. A low energy ion beam facility (LEIBF) having permanent magnet ECRIS on high voltage platform and a 1.7 MV Pelletron are being used for regular experiments. Details of various developmental activities related to the heavy ion accelerator and associated systems at Inter-University Accelerator Centre (IUAC) are presented. (author)