A New Family of High-Current Cyclotrons for Isotope Production

Abstract

We are developing a high-current cyclotron as a driver for the IsoDAR neutrino experiment. It accelerates 5 mA H2+ to 60 MeV/amu, after which the electron is removed to produce a 10 mA, 60 MeV proton beam. The enabling innovations that offset space-charge effects occur at injection and in the first few turns, allowing one to construct cyclotrons with energies ranging from below 5 MeV up to 60 MeV/amu, or possibly higher, with the same performance for accelerated ions with Q/A = 0.5 (H2+, D+, He++, ...). In this paper, we discuss the possible uses of such cyclotrons for isotope production, including production of long-lived generator parents (68Ga, 44Ti, 82Sr,...), as well as intense fast neutron beams from deuteron breakup for (n,2n) production of isotopes like 225Ac.

35 pages, 19 figures, paper submitted to the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, as part of the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Isotopes, held in Saskatoon, Canada, July 2023. This version replies to further Referee comments from original submission