The Atomki accelerator center

Particle accelerators are the driving forces of nuclear physics laboratories and MTA Atomki, the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is no exception. The Atomki Accelerator Center (AAC) incorporates several low-energy charged-particle accelerators, offering the possibility of choosing ions with various charge states, energies and beam intensities. Currently, the AAC has six main facilities: a cyclotron (K=20), two Van de Graaff accelerators (1 MV, 5 MV), an ECR ion source, an electromagnetic isotope separator and a 2 MV Tandetron installed in 2015. The accelerators, spanning a range of beam energies from 50 eV to 27 MeV, have been designed for a broad range of research projects and applications in various fields – mainly in nuclear and atomic physics, materials science, environmental research and archaeology. The structure of the laboratory with a short description of the most important topics, education and outreach activities are presented.