Study on radiation production in the charge stripping section of the RISP linear accelerator

Abstract

The linear accelerator of the Rare Isotope Science Project (RISP) accelerates 200 MeV/nucleon ²³⁸U ions in a multi-charge states. Many kinds of radiations are generated while the primary beam is transported along the beam line. The stripping process using thin carbon foil leads to complicated radiation environments at the 90-degree bending section. The charge distribution of ²³⁸U ions after the carbon charge stripper was calculated by using the LISE++ program. The estimates of the radiation environments were carried out by using the well-proved Monte Carlo codes PHITS and FLUKA. The tracks of ²³⁸U ions in various charge states were identified using the magnetic field subroutine of the PHITS code. The dose distribution caused by U beam losses for those tracks was obtained over the accelerator tunnel. A modified calculation was applied for tracking the multi-charged U beams because the fundamental idea of PHITS and FLUKA was to transport fully-ionized ion beam. In this study, the beam loss pattern after a stripping section was observed, and the radiation production by heavy ions was studied. Finally, the performance of the PHITS and the FLUKA codes was validated for estimating the radiation production at the stripping section by applying a modified method.