SPES cyclotron in operation

After break for Covid2019 emergency, the LNL team forced the schedule for restarting the Cyclotron operation at 1 MeV energy.
After two years of shutdown for maintenance and to carry on the SPES facility installations, the 70MeV Cyclotron is back in operation. For the first phase it is foreseen to accelerate the beam (H^-) up to the energy of 1 MeV to check the well working of the whole system. The radial probe intercepting the beam after few turns was blocked into the cyclotron to not permit the particles to be over accelerated (see figure 1). In the meantime, tests to check the performance limits of the accelerator have been done, and the Cyclotron group got the average current of 950 µA accelerating to 1 MeV with stable behavior over more than one hour (see fig. 1).
This is a breakthrough goal which will permit in the future, by employing a new buncher in the injection line, to achieve more than 1 mA beam accelerated. It will allow to study the current limits of the compact cyclotron accelerator devoted to deliver high power beams.

Fig.1: Central region of SPES cyclotron operational at LNL with the beam stopper in the foreground (copper cylinder shape) intercepting the beam at 1 MeV. In the right box, it is shown the average current trend accelerated into the LNL Cyclotron at 1 MeV energy