Design And Performance Of A 3 MV Tandetron(TM) Accelerator System For High-Current Applications

The Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, India will commission in 2011 a 3 MV Tandetron(TM) accelerator system. Hi-flux neutron production, nuclear reaction cross-section measurements and time of flight experiments are among the research activities to be performed with this system. Features such as high beam currents, high beam energy stability and low beam energy spread are necessary when conducting these types of experiments. At the same time, the beam energy must be known with high accuracy. This article reports the early results obtained during the in-house testing of the system. H beam currents of 500 mu A have been transported through the system. The so-called "Q-snout" electrode lens ensures high particle transmission ( similar to 70%) through the accelerator even at 7% of the rated terminal voltage (TV). At present, the negative H ion beam current output of the SO120 multicusp ion source, rated at only 2 mA, combined with the Tandetron(TM) accelerators (with terminal voltage ranging from 1 to 6 MV) provides H beam powers of up to 10 kW.