TRIUMF’s accelerator infrastructure and expertise provides for a unique and fertile ecosystem for the development of isotopes for new medical applications. Over the past 5 years, the Life Sciences division has been working to expand its portfolio of isotopes beyond the traditional repertoire of positron- and gamma-emitting imaging isotopes to include a number of alpha-, … Continued
In July 2017, the DEAP-3600 collaboration published its first paper reporting on the search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) using four days of data collected during the commissioning phase. While the data showed no interactions between the liquid argon atoms and WIMPs (as expected based on the short exposure time), the result showed the … Continued
In August 2016, the DEAP-3600 experiment was finally completed with the filling of the acrylic vessel with 3.6 tonnes of liquid argon. This milestone marked the beginning of the physics operation for this experiment. The DAQ and the Science & Technology groups at TRIUMF worked extensively to ensure that the data acquisition system was ready … Continued
To listen for interactions between DEAP’s argon detector and dark matter, the collaboration had to create one of the most radiogenically clean environments in the entire universe. To do this, the collaboration fabricated its inner detector, a sphere of radius 85 cm, from ultra-pure acrylic, and designed and implemented an 18 feet tall sanding robot … Continued
A computer simulation using the GEANT4 nuclear transport toolkit was developed to model the production of isotopes from rare isotope beam targets used at ISAC. In combination with in-depth isotope beam characterization (via nuclear spectroscopy) at the ISAC yield station, the simulation data is a pivotal foundation for the development of better targets and the … Continued
Around the experimental regions of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), beams travel in a common vacuum chamber and therefore experience the fields of the opposing beams – so-called ‘long-range interactions’. These are unavoidable and, being nonlinear, limit the LHC’s luminosity. Studies of this effect are essential for designs crucial for the ongoing high-luminosity upgrade (or … Continued
Superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) technology is the enabling advances in a new generation of proton linacs for discovery science or industrial application. Strong electromagnetic fields created in specially designed resonators are used to accelerate the protons. A class of resonators, termed spoke cavities, is efficient in acceleration but suffers from a phenomenon called ‘multipacting’ wherein a … Continued
An efficient but accurate beam dynamics model for linear accelerators has been developed and is being used in our control rooms, and in particular to commission the electron linear accelerator (e-linac). Other labs use simulations of up to ond million particles and then distill these down to only the 3 size parameters of the beam … Continued
Virtually contamination-free radioactive ion beams can now be provided at ISAC from a new ion-guide laser ion source (IG-LIS) [1]. This IG-LIS allows for experiments on isotopes that for decades have been overwhelmed by contamination from surface-ionized isobars. TRILIS now routinely provides isotopes from 37 different elements. Laser ionization schemes for an additional 24 elements … Continued
On May 26th, 2018, the AWAKE collaboration (to which TRIUMF has been an active contributor of beam instrumentation since 2014) successfully accelerated witness-electrons for the first time. AWAKE has demonstrated that these low energy electrons can gain energy while “riding” waves generated in plasma (ionized gas) by a proton beam, at a rate of around … Continued