AIFIRA: a light ion beam facility for ion beam analysis and irradiation

AIFIRA is a small-scale ion beam facility equipped with a single-stage electrostatic accelerator delivering bright beams of light ions (protons, deuterons and helium ions) in the MeV energy range. The facility provides ion beam irradiation, analysis, and imaging techniques to academic research groups and companies. These techniques cover a wide range of applications including materials research, life sciences, environment, geology and geochemistry, archeometry, and applied physics. About 200 days of beam time are allocated each year to internal and external users either coming from local, national, or international teams. AIFIRA is certified as a research platform by its two parent institutions: CNRS/IN2P3 and the university of Bordeaux. Therefore, beamtime allocation is opened to external teams that are accompanied by local experts to prepare, perform and analyze their experiments. This paper describes the facility and the developments performed in the last years. We highlight two original features of the facility: charge collection studies using a microbeam and the production of secondary neutron fields

CENBG Control System and Specific Instrumentation Developments for SPIRAL2-DESIR Setups

International audienceThe DESIR facility will be in few years the SPIRAL2 experimental hall at GANIL dedicated to the study of nuclear structure, astrophysics and weak interaction at low energy. Exotic ions produced by the new S3 facility and SPIRAL1 complex will be transferred to high precision experiments in the DESIR building. To guaranty high purity beams to perform high precision measurements on specific nuclei, three main devices are currently being developed at CENBG: a High Resolution Separator (HRS), a General Purpose Ion Buncher (GPIB) and a double Penning Trap named ’PIPERADE’. The Control System (CS) developments we made at CENBG are already used to commission these devices. We present here beamline equipment CS solutions and the global architecture of this SPIRAL2 EPICS based CS.To answer specific needs, instrumental solutions have been developed like PPG used to optimize bunch timing and also used as traps conductor. Recent development using the cost efficient Redpitaya board with an embedded EPICS server will be described. This device used to drive a FCup amplifier and is also used for particle counting and time of flight measurements using our FPGA implementation called ’RedPiTOF’

Commissioning of the DESIR High-Resolution Separator at CENBG

International audienceDESIR is the low-energy part of the SPIRAL2 ISOL facility under construction at GANIL. The high-resolution mass separator (HRS) included in DESIR is a 180 degree symmetric online separator with two 90 degree magnetic dipole sections arranged with electrostatic quadrupoles, sextupoles and a multipole on the mid plane. The HRS is now completely mounted at CENBG and under commissioning for the next 2 to 3 years before its transfer at the entrance of the DESIR facility. The objective is to test, characterise and correct all HRS elements contributing to the higher order aberration by performing experimental measurements and comparing them with the results from different simulation tools. The recently mounted pepperpot-type emittance-meter will allow us to observe the emittance figures and dynamically tune the multipole to improve the optical parameters of the HRS. We will present the first results concerning the hexapolar correction with the multipole, the associated emittance measurements and the resolution currently achieved

The General Purpose Ion Buncher: a radiofrequency quadrupole cooler-buncher for DESIR at SPIRAL2

We report on the conception and first tests of the General Purpose Ion Buncher (GPIB), the radio-frequency beam-cooler and buncher that will supply the DESIR (Decay, Excitation and Storage of Radioactive Ions) experimental hall to be constructed to complement the SPIRAL1 and SPIRAL2 facilities in GANIL. Its goals are both to reduce the emittance and if necessary to bunch the radioactive ion beam from the GANIL production facilities to adapt it to the needs of the different experimental setups in the DESIR hall. The mechanical design is similar to the existing ISCOOL quadrupole at ISOLDE but the new radio-frequency system enables a much stronger radial confinement. The GPIB is developed at LP2i Bordeaux 1 in parallel with the PIPERADE double Penning trap and a beamline has been constructed there to characterize both. The cooling of a 30 keV beam to an emittance of 3 .mm.mrad and a transmission above 80% in continuous mode is demonstrated for currents up to a few nA. Some first results concerning the bunching mode are also shown though this mode is still under development