Linear deutron and light ion accelerator successfully tested in Dubna

The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research has successfully launched a new linear deuteron and light ion accelerator developed in MEPhI for the NICA collider. The injector successfully accelerated a beam at the design energy of 5 MeV/nucleon.

The development of the linear accelerator started in 2011, seeking to inject protons, polarized deuterons and light ions into the collider NICA, which is under construction. Its will replace a high-voltage electrostatic pre-injector, developed more than 40 years ago, with a modern accelerator capable of spatially uniform quadrupole focusing. The project is being realized by a team of specialists from JINR, MEPhI and Kurchatov Institute.

After two years of construction, the Russian Federal Nuclear Center – VNIITF (Snezhinsk) has made the accelerator cavity. Kurchatov Institute has also developed and built a high-frequency supply system. The physical start-up of the new accelerator was conducted in December, 2015.

The results of the work have been reported at the 7^th International Particle Accelerators Conference, IPAC'2016, held in the middle of May, 2016 in Busan, South Korea. Currently, the injection complex is getting ready for work with a new source of polarized protons and deuterons. In the future, the researchers plan to develop a new superconductive linear accelerator with energy of 25 to 30 MeV to replace the obsolescent LU-20.