The development, build, and test of an emittance scanner for the ISOL@MYRRHA offline test stand

Job description

ISOL@MYRRHA is a high-intensity Radioactive Ion Beam facility under development at SCK CEN in Mol, Belgium. It extracts a fraction of the 100 MeV proton beam from the MINERVA linear accelerator to irradiate on thick production targets. By generating diverse short-lived isotopes with extended, uninterrupted run times, it enables high-precision research in fundamental nuclear physics, material science, and medical radioisotopes. This thesis focuses on the offline test stand working with non-radioactive ion beams, which serves as the primary testbench for qualifying new target-ion source units before online operation. Transverse emittance is a quantitative measure of beam quality that defines the spread and distribution of particles in phase space. It is critical because a low-emittance beam minimizes particle losses during transport and ensures high mass-separation efficiency. To measure this rather than building new hardware, this project explores different emittance measurement techniques through particle simulations and automated data-analysis algorithms, concluding with experimental beam measurements on the offline test stand . The specific objectives are: Diagnostic Method Evaluation: Conduct a comparative analysis of emittance measurement techniques (e.g., Allison scanner, slit-grid, pepper-pot, quadrupole scan) tailored for low-energy stable ion beams. Particle Dynamics Simulation: Model ion trajectories and simulate synthetic diagnostic signals under varying optical conditions. Analysis & Scripting Development: Develop custom software routines (Python/MATLAB) for phase-space profile reconstruction, noise filtering, and calculation of RMS emittance and Twiss parameters. Experimental Testing & Validation: Perform measurements on the offline test stand using stable isotopes to validate the analysis scripts against real-world experimental data.