Acceleration of low-intensity triton beams with the AGOR cyclotron

Abstract

The (t, 3He)-reaction is an interesting tool for the study of spin-isospin excitations in nuclei. Safety problems in the handling of tritium have sofar precluded its widespread use and have even led to the use of secondary triton beams. The feasibility of providing accelerated triton beams for experiments, with the constraint that no additional safety measures for the use of tritium are needed, is discussed. It is concluded that with the existing source triton beams with an intensity up to 107 pps and an energy up to 65 MeV per nucleon can be delivered; installation of a dedicated high efficiency ion source and a better transmission in the low energy beam lines will give a tenfold increase in intensity. These intensities require a tritium consumption of about 1.5 MBq per week.