The IFUSP Microtron - Status and Perspectives

The Laboratório do Acelerador Linear (LAL) of the Physics Institute of the University of São Paulo (IFUSP) is building a 31 MeV continuous wave (cw) racetrack microtron [1][2]. This two-stage microtron comprises a 1.8 MeV injector linac, a five-turn microtron booster that increases the energy to 4.9 MeV, and the main microtron, which delivers a 31 MeV cw electron beam after 28 turns. The injector consists of a 100 keV electron gun, chopping and bunching systems, a capture section and a pre-accelerating section; therefore the complete accelerator has four RF accelerating structures, operating at 2450 MHz. This cascaded configuration was adopted in order to maximize the final energy of the system while keeping the RF power under 45 kW, so that the whole system could be powered with a single RF source, namely a 50 kW cw klystron, to minimize costs. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the accelerator. The experimental hall, with two beam lines, is located 2.68 m below the accelerator room. One of the beam lines will be dedicated to experiments using tagged photons, while the remaining line will be used for high beam intensity experiments or production of X-rays by coherent bremsstrahlung [3]. Fig. 1 shows a view of the machine in the accelerator building.