Preparation of a primary argon beam for the CERN fixed target physics

D Küchler; M O'Neil; R Scrivens; R Thomae

doi:10.1063/1.4854275

Preparation of a primary argon beam for the CERN fixed target physics

Rev Sci Instrum. 2014 Feb;85(2):02A954. doi: 10.1063/1.4854275.

Authors

D Küchler¹, M O'Neil¹, R Scrivens¹, R Thomae²

Affiliations

¹ CERN, BE Department, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland.
² iThemba LABS, P.O. Box 722, Somerset West 7130, South Africa.

PMID: 24593533
DOI: 10.1063/1.4854275

Abstract

The fixed target experiment NA61 in the North Area of the Super Proton Synchrotron is studying phase transitions in strongly interacting matter. Up to now they used the primary beams available from the CERN accelerator complex (protons and lead ions) or fragmented beams created from the primary lead ion beam. To explore a wider range of energies and densities a request was made to provide primary argon and xenon beams. This paper describes the results of the setting up and 10 week test run of the Ar(11+) beam from the 14.5 GHz ECR ion source and the linear accelerator (Linac3) at CERN.