Garchinger Maier-Leibnitz-Kolloquium: Ionoacoustic monitoring of intense particle bunches

by Mrs Sonja Gerlach (LMU Munich, Department of Medical Physics, Garching)

Thursday 4 May 2023, 16:15 → 17:15 Europe/Berlin

Lecture Hall, ground floor (west) (LMU building, Am Coulombwall 1, campus Garching)

Ionoacoustics is an innovative method that employs the acoustic wave emitted by pulsed ion beams slowing down in water. Detecting these acoustic signals with ultrasonic transducers enables the reconstruction of the longitudinal and transversal beam parameters with remarkable precision in an extensive range  of beam intensities. Being radiation hard and straightforward to use,  ionoacoustics complements the existing suite of particle detectors, especially for radiation sources with high particle fluxes. Experimental campaigns at various RF-based accelerators, i.e. a synchrotron, a clinical synchrocyclotron and a tandem accelerator, could demonstrate the sub-mm localisation of the Bragg peak. Further, ionoacoustics was demonstrated to reveal the lateral beam parameters in transmission mode, i.e. without the particles stopping in the detector volume. One particularly interesting application case depicts laser-ion sources that benefit from the electromagnetic pulse resistance of ionoacoustic detector designs. Recently, we demonstrated the monitoring of single focused and energy-selected ion bunches accelerated by a high-power laser interacting with a thin foil target. A dedicated read-out routine provides bunch parameters quickly, enabling automated optimisation of the laser-ion source with respect to application-specific bunch parameters. Finally, the ionoacoustic method was proven to be sensitive to the absolute particle number despite the extremely high fluxes, which might become interesting for applications in the context of the Flash effect.

Hybrid access via ZOOM:
https://lmu-munich.zoom.us/j/98457332925?pwd=TWc3V1JkSHpyOTBPQVlMelhuNnZ1dz09
Meeting ID: 984 5733 2925
Passcode: 979953

kolloquium-04-05-23.pdf