Sudharsan visits IBA
OMA Fellow Sudharsan Srinivasan, from the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) has recently spent three weeks on secondment in the facilities of IBA – Ion Beam Applications in Louvain-La-Neuve (Belgium).
Since this was Sudharsan’s second visit to IBA, it was easy for him to adapt to the Physics research group. Sudharsan spent his time working with the group on potential improvements to his beam diagnostics, and the benefits it could offer as compared to ionization chambers. The discussions focused on specific design considerations for isochronous cyclotrons and synchrocyclotrons. This led to the design of cavity resonators that could be translated to IBA Proton Therapy systems as current monitors, but with similar dimensions to an ionization chamber.
Discussions were also held about their application to FLASH as it is expected that the signal integration time could be in the same regime as that of ionization chambers. The influence of energy spread on the resonator sensitivity was put forward for discussion and ideas about designing the cavities on the fundamental RF frequency was considered. Sudharsan could also explore its applicability for Time-Of-Flight measurements (for energy evaluation) and for dosimetry as a function of beam current and energy.
This secondment has been very beneficial for Sudharsan and has opened possibilities for further collaborations.