Projects
The IsoDAR source comprises a novel compact cyclotron capable of delivering 10 mA of 60 MeV protons in cw mode and a high-power target. It has obtained preliminary approval to run at the new underground facility Yemilab in South Korea. IsoDAR will produce a very pure, isotropic electron antineutrino source, with peak neutrino energy around 6 MeV and endpoint around 15 MeV. Paired with a kton-scale detector like the planned Liquid Scintillator Counter (LSC) at Yemilab, IsoDAR can measure electron antineutrino disappearance through the inverse beta decay (IBD) channel. We expect about 1.67 million IBD events and ~7000 electron antineutrino – electron elastic scatter events in the LSC in five years of running, letting us distinguish many different models for noble (aka sterile) neutrinos and improving significantly on existing limits for Non-Standard Interactions (NSI). Finally, IsoDAR@Yemilab is sensitive to new particles produced in the target (such as a light X boson) and axion-like particles (ALPs).
MIST Ion Source Lab
In the Multicusp Ion Source development at MIT (MIST) ion source laboratory, we are developing state-of the art ion sources to produce record beam currents of beams with an exceptionally high species content of 80% H2+.
Beams from our ion source have emittances as low as 0.05 pi-mm-mrad (RMS, normalized).
Iron-Free Superconducting Cyclotron
Superconducting cyclotrons are increasingly employed for proton beam radiotherapy treatment (PBRT). The use of superconductivity in a cyclotron design can reduce its mass by an order of magnitude and size by a factor of 3-4 over conventional resistive magnet technology, yielding significant reduction in overall cost of the device, the accelerator vault, and its infrastructure. In the presented work, we go a step further and remove the iron yoke, generating the cyclotron magnetic field with a combination of superconducting coils only. Elimination of the iron yoke has several key benefits. First and foremost, the overall weight can be reduced by almost another order of magnitude. Secondly, eliminating all magnetic iron from the flux circuit results in a linear relationship between field and coil current, which allows smooth scaling of the magnetic field and thus the output energy, for example from 70 to 230 MeV, thereby removing the need for a degrader, making this accelerator ideal for FLASH.
ABRACADABRA (A Broadband/Resonant Approach to Cosmic Axion Detection with an Amplifying B-field Ring Apparatus) is a new search for axion dark matter. If they exist, axions modify Maxwell's equations, and ABRACADABRA (or ABRA for short) exploits this by using a toroidal magnet to source an effective electric current. This effective current then induces an oscillating magnetic flux through the center of the toroid, which is detected and amplified with a pickup loop and SQUID magnetometer. The current generation, ABRACADABRA-10cm, is located at MIT.
Images from Ouellet et al. PRL 122 (2019)
OPAL is a parallel open source tool for charged-particle optics in linear accelerators and rings, including 3D space charge. Using the MAD language with extensions, OPAL can run on a laptop as well as on the largest high performance computing systems. OPAL is built from the ground up as a parallel application exemplifying the fact that high performance computing is the third leg of science, complementing theory and experiment.
The OPAL framework makes it easy to add new features in the form of new C++ classes. OPAL comes in the following flavours:
OPAL-cycl - Tracks particles with 3D space charge including neighbouring turns in cyclotrons and FFAs with time as the independent variable.
OPAL-t - Models beam lines, linacs, rf-photo injectors and complete XFELs.
OPAL-map Map tracking (experimental, no space charge yet)
Images from Winklehner et al. PRAB 20 (2017)