A new family of high-current cyclotrons for isotope production

Abstract

We are developing a high-current cyclotron as a driver for the IsoDAR neutrino experiment. It accelerates 5 mA of H2 + to 60 MeV/amu, after which the electron is removed to produce a 10 mA, 60 MeV proton beam. The enabling innovations that offset space-charge effects occur at injection and in the first few turns, allowing one to construct cyclotrons with energies ranging from below 5 MeV up to 60 MeV/amu, or possibly higher, with the same performance for accelerated ions with Q/A = 0.5 (H2+, D+, He++, …). In this paper, we discuss the possible uses of such cyclotrons for isotope production, including production of long-lived generator parents (68Ga, 44Ti, 82Sr,…), as well as intense fast neutron beams from deuteron breakup for (n,2n) production of isotopes like 225Ac.