Compton Backscattering Concept for the Production of Molybdenum-99

The medical isotope Molybdenum-99 is presently used for 80-85% of all nuclear medicine procedures and is produced by irradiating highly enriched uranium U-235 targets in NRU reactors. It was recently proposed that an electron linac be used for the production of 99Mo via photo-fission of a natural uranium target coming from the excitation of the giant dipole resonance around 15 MeV. The photons can be produced using the braking radiation (“bremsstrahlung”) spectrum of an electron beam impinged on a high Z material. In this paper we present an alternate concept for the production of 99Mo which is also based on photo-fission of U-238, but where the ~15 MeV gamma-rays are produced by Compton backscattering of laser photons from relativistic electrons. We assume a laser wavelength of 330 nm, resulting in 485 MeV electron beam energy, and 10 mA of average current. Because the induced energy spread on the electron beam is a few percent, one may recover most of the electron beam energy, which substantially increases the efficiency of the system. The accelerator concept, based on a three-pass recirculation system with energy recovery, is described and efficiency estimates are presented

Dual AC Dipole Excitation for the Measurement of Magnetic Multipole Strength from Beam Position Monitor Data

An experiment was conducted at Jefferson Lab's Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility to develop a technique for characterizing the nonlinear fields of the beam transport system. Two air-core dipole magnets were simultaneously driven at two different frequencies to provide a time-dependent transverse modulation of the electron beam. Fourier decomposition of beam position monitor data was then used to measure the amplitude of these frequencies at different positions along the beamline. For a purely linear transport system one expects to find solely the frequencies that were applied to the dipoles with amplitudes that depend on the phase advance of the lattice. In the presence of nonlinear fields one expects to also find harmonics of the driving frequencies that depend on the order of the nonlinearity. The technique was calibrated using one of the sextupole magnets in a CEBAF beamline and then applied to a dipole to measure the sextupole and octupole strength of the magnet. A comparison is made between the beam-based measurements, results from TOSCA and data from our Magnet Measurement Facility

Simulating Electron Impact Ionization Using a General Particle Tracer (GPT) Custom Element

A new C++ custom element has been developed with the framework of General Particle Tracer (GPT) to simulate electron impact ionization of residual gas molecules. The custom element uses Monte-Carlo routines to determine both the ion production rate and the secondary electron kinetic energy based on user-defined gas densities and theoretical values for the ionization cross section and the secondary electron differential cross section. It then uses relativistic kinematics to track the secondary electron, the scattered electron, and the newly formed ion after ionization. The ion production rate and the secondary electron energy distribution determined by the custom element have been benchmarked against theoretical calculations and against simulations made using the simulation package IBSimu. While the custom element was originally built for particle accelerator simulations, it is readily extensible to other applications. The custom element will be described in detail and examples of applications at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility will be presented for ion production in a DC high voltage photo-gun

Thomson and Compton scattering with an intense laser pulse

Our paper concerns the scattering of intense laser radiation on free electrons and it is focused on the relation between nonlinear Compton and nonlinear Thomson scattering. The analysis is performed for a laser field modeled by an ideal pulse with a finite duration, a fixed direction of propagation and indefinitely extended in the plane perpendicular to it. We derive the classical limit of the quantum spectral and angular distribution of the emitted radiation, for an arbitrary polarization of the laser pulse. We also rederive our result directly, in the framework of classical electrodynamics, obtaining, at the same time, the distribution for the emitted radiation with a well defined polarization. The results reduce to those established by Krafft et al. [Phys. Rev. E 72, 056502 (2005)] in the particular case of linear polarization of the pulse, orthogonal to the initial electron momentum. Conditions in which the differences between classical and quantum results are visible are discussed and illustrated by graphs

Magnetized Electron Source for JLEIC Cooler

Magnetized bunched-beam electron cooling is a critical part of the Jefferson Lab Electron Ion Collider (JLEIC). Strong cooling of ion beams will be accomplished inside a cooling solenoid where the ions co-propagate with an electron beam generated from a source immersed in magnetic field. This contribution describes the production and characterization of magnetized electron beam using a compact 300 kV DC high voltage photogun and bialkali-antimonide photocathodes. Beam magnetization was studied using a diagnostic beamline that includes viewer screens for measuring the shearing angle of the electron beamlet passing through a narrow upstream slit. Correlated beam emittance with magnetic field at the photocathode was measured for various laser spot sizes. Measurements of photocathode lifetime were carried out at different magnetized electron beam currents up to 28 mA and high bunch charge up to 0.7 nano-Coulomb was demonstrated

MEIC Design Progress

This paper will report the recent progress in the conceptual design of MEIC, a high luminosity medium energy polarized ring-ring electron-ion collider at Jefferson lab. The topics and achievements that will be covered are design of the ion large booster and the ERL-circulator-ring-based electron cooling facility, optimization of chromatic corrections and dynamic aperture studies, schemes and tracking simulations of lepton and ion polarization in the figure-8 collider ring, and the beam-beam and electron cooling simulations. A proposal of a test facility for the MEIC electron cooler will also be discussed

Gluons and the quark sea at high energies: distributions, polarization, tomography

This report is based on a ten-week program on "Gluons and the quark sea at high-energies", which took place at the Institute for Nuclear Theory in Seattle in Fall 2010. The principal aim of the program was to develop and sharpen the science case for an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a facility that will be able to collide electrons and positrons with polarized protons and with light to heavy nuclei at high energies, offering unprecedented possibilities for in-depth studies of quantum chromodynamics. This report is organized around four major themes: i) the spin and flavor structure of the proton, ii) three-dimensional structure of nucleons and nuclei in momentum and configuration space, iii) QCD matter in nuclei, and iv) Electroweak physics and the search for physics beyond the Standard Model. Beginning with an executive summary, the report contains tables of key measurements, chapter overviews for each of the major scientific themes, and detailed individual contributions on various aspects of the scientific opportunities presented by an EIC.Comment: 547 pages, A report on the joint BNL/INT/Jlab program on the science case for an Electron-Ion Collider, September 13 to November 19, 2010, Institute for Nuclear Theory, Seattle; v2 with minor changes, matches printed versio