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Design of a rapid-cycling synchrotron for flash proton therapy

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to design a rapid-cycling synchrotron, making it capable of proton beam ultrahigh dose rate irradiation, inspired by laser accelerators. The design had to be cheap and simple. We consider our design from six aspects: the lattice, injection, extraction, space charge effects, eddy current effects and energy switching. Efficiency and particle quantity must be addressed when injected. The space charge effects at the injection could affect particles’ number. The eddy current effects in the vacuum chambers would affect the magnetic field itself and generate heat, all of which need to be taken into account. Fast extraction can obtain \(10^{10}\) protons/pulse, equal to instantaneous dose rate up to \(10^7\) Gy/s in a very short time, while changing various extraction energies rapidly and easily to various deposition depths. In the further research, we expect to combine a delivery system with this accelerator to realize the FLASH irradiation.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Science Data Bank at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.j00186.00169 and https://cstr.cn/31253.11.sciencedb.j00186.00169.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201800, China

    Ying Shi, Man-Zhou Zhang, Lian-Hua Ou-Yang, Zhi-Ling Chen & De-Ming Li

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Ying Shi, Man-Zhou Zhang, Lian-Hua Ou-Yang, Zhi-Ling Chen & De-Ming Li

  3. Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201210, China

    Man-Zhou Zhang, Lian-Hua Ou-Yang, Zhi-Ling Chen, Xiu-Fang Li & De-Ming Li

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  1. Ying Shi
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Ying Shi and Man-Zhou Zhang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ying Shi and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. The software use was helped by Lian-Hua Ou-Yang. And the article was supervised and revised by Man-Zhou Zhang, Zhi-Ling Chen, Xiu-Fang Li and De-Ming Li.

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Correspondence to Man-Zhou Zhang.

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Man-Zhou Zhang is an editorial board member for Nuclear Science and Techniques and was not involved in the editorial review, or the decision to publish this article. All authors declare that there are no competing interests.

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Shi, Y., Zhang, MZ., Ou-Yang, LH. et al. Design of a rapid-cycling synchrotron for flash proton therapy. NUCL SCI TECH 34, 145 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-023-01283-3

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