Facilities at the Nishina Center

Superconducting Ring Cyclotron (SRC)

The most powerful accelerator on the earth
Image of SRC

The Superconducting Ring Cyclotron (SRC) can deliver the world’s highest intensity beam. The SRC is entirely sealed by pure iron and weighs 8,300 tons. Such a structure not only enables us to achieve the world’s highest bending power for an ion beam (8 Tm) but also adds the capacity for self-shielding of leakage magnetic field and leakage radiation to the facility.

In the final stage of acceleration at the RIBF, the beam can be accelerated up to 70% of the speed of light through the SRC.

Moreover, the utilization of superconductivity drastically reduces the energy consumed down to 1/100 of the conventional accelerators.

 

Thick bulky iron shields magnetic field

Inner of SRC

The SRC is entirely sealed by pure iron and weighs 8,300 tons. Such a structure not only enables us to achieve the world highest bending power of ion beam (8 Tm) but also adds the capacity for self-shielding of leakage magnetic field and leakage radiation to the facility.

Why accelerated up to 70% of the speed of light?

The SRC is the world’s first separated sector ring cyclotron with six superconducting sector magnets developed specifically for the RIBF. It can accelerate light ions (such as helium) and heavy ions (such as uranium) up to 400 MeV and 350 MeV per nucleon, respectively. RIKEN pioneered the development of this accelerator at the RIBF — the first of its kind in the world. It is necessary to accelerate the heavy ion (primary) beam to approximately 70% of the speed of light in order to produce the RI beam. It is known that the RI beam production efficiency will improve only slightly if the primary beam is accelerated over this speed, which is why the maximum acceleration speed is set to 70% of the speed of light at the SRC.

The SRC weighs twice as much as the Tokyo Tower!

Comparison of weight and size of SRC and Tokyo Tower

The specifications of the SRC

Diameter 18.4 m
Height 7.7 m
Beam injection/extraction radii Injection 3.56 m
Beam injection/extraction radii Extraction 5.36 m
Beam circumference 14,000 m
Weight 8,300 tons