The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory is the first accelerator facility that can accelerate, store and collide spin polarized proton beams. This development enables a physics program aimed at understanding how the spin of the proton results from its quark and gluon substructures. Spin states that are either parallel (longitudinal) or perpendicular (transve...

Laser driven ion acceleration (LDIA) has the potential to deliver compact and affordable accelerators for applications in many fields of science and medicine. Specifically, radiotherapy of cancerous tumors requires ion energies in the range of 200-300 MeV/a.m.u. and with energy spreads on the order of 5%, parameters thus far beyond the LDIA experimental results using the most powerful lasers in...

Aim of this paper is to present a brief and basic introduction to polarized beams and the behaviour of a particle’s spin in an electromagnetic field. It is not intended to give a complete presentation of the spin dynamic theory. Instead the most important features are given without proof and details not absolutely necessary are left out. Spin depolarizing mechanisms are discussed and the cures ...

The use of radioactive beams opens a new frontier for fusion studies. The coupling to the continuum can be explored with very loosely bound nuclei. Experiments were performed with beams of nuclei at or near the proton and neutron drip-lines to measure fusion and associated reactions in the vicinity of the Coulomb barrier. In addition, the fusion yield is predicted to be enhanced in reactions in...

Hadron beams have attractive growing interest for cancer treatment owing to their high dose localization around the Bragg peak. Heavier-ions such carbon-ion beams, in particular, can realize higher 3D dose localization, compared with a proton beam, owing to a highly biological effect around the Bragg peak and a low multiple scattering effect. Recently, therefore, hadron cancer radiotherapy has ...

We review the present understanding of beam halo in proton linacs. Space-charge forces acting in mismatched beams have been identified as a major cause of beamhalo. We introduce a new description of the halo using the ratio of moments of the distribution of beam coordinates. We describe the beam-halo experiment that is in preparation at Los Alamos, which will address questions about the beam pr...

BACKGROUND Laser acceleration of protons and heavy ions may in the future be used in radiation therapy. Laser-driven particle beams are pulsed and ultra high dose rates of >10⁹ Gy s⁻¹ may be achieved. Here we compare the radiobiological effects of pulsed and continuous proton beams. METHODS The ion microbeam SNAKE at the Munich tandem accelerator was used to directly compare a pulsed and a co...

Proliferating thyroid cells are more sensitive to UV-C radiations than quiescent cells. The effect is mediated by nuclear phosphatidylcholine and sphingomyelin metabolism. It was demonstrated that proton beams arrest cell growth and stimulate apoptosis but until now there have been no indications in the literature about their possible mechanism of action. Here we studied the effect of protons o...

PURPOSE To evaluate the uncertainties and characteristics of radiochromic film-based dosimetry system using the EBT3 model Gafchromic(®) film in therapy photon, electron and proton beams. MATERIAL AND METHODS EBT3 films were read using an EPSON Expression 10000XL/PRO scanner. They were irradiated in five beams, an Elekta SL25 6 MV and 18 MV photon beam, an IBA 100 MeV 5 × 5 cm(2) proton beam ...

The dynamics of the focusing of laser-driven ion beams produced from concave solid targets was studied. Most of the ion beam energy is observed to converge at the center of the cylindrical targets with a spot diameter of 30  μm, which can be very beneficial for applications requiring high beam energy densities. Also, unbalanced laser irradiation does not compromise the focusability of the beam....