Radioactive Ion Beam Purity of ISOL@MYRRHA and interactive nuclide chart to represent the estimated

An ISOL facility is currently emerging within the MYRRHA  project in Belgium. This facility will use 100 MeV protons with high intensities (up to 500 μA available) to produce a vast range of radioisotopes, namely radioactive ion beams for fundamental research but also isotopes for medical purposes, such as Ac225. This ISOL facility uses a modular frontend system with easily exchangeable target and ion sources which is largely based on the ARIEL design at TRIUMF and ISOLDE at CERN. This allows, not only to use available state-of-the-art targets and ion sources but also limit the facility downtime for target exchange since the target is pre-mounted and conditioned before operation. For facility commissioning and startup, the ISOL system will operate with low-power target and ion source assemblies (TISA) which also provides return of experience to ramp up the beam power gradually.

Four different targets and three ion sources are proposed for the start-up of ISOL@MYRRHA. For the resulting target ion source configurations isotope in-target production has been estimated using FLUKA Monte Carlo simulations and extraction efficiencies have been estimated based on the isotope extraction efficiencies of measured yields at ISAC and ISOLDE facilities. About 482 radioactive ion beam (RIB) yields have been computed for 48 chemical elements. When folding this with the ion source capabilities at ISOL@MYRRHA, about 356 yields from 34 elements become accessible at start-up of the facility operation, while others will become accessible later with the use of more advanced ion sources (i.e. FEBIAD type) or upgrades to IMRILS. Even though intensities have been calculated, estimations on the beam purity are still missing. e.g. a RIB of 47Ca, can be contaminated with isobars such as 47K or even a molecular contamination of 28Al with F (A=47). The assessment of the beam purity for the mentioned calculated yields will be one of the focuses of this master thesis.

Additionally the student will work on a tool which is an interactive interface for the future users of the ISOL@MYRRHA facility to easily consult the RIB catalogue, similar to the one existing at ISOLDE-CERN [1]. The chart of nuclides can be based on existing open source solutions, such as the one of ISOLDE CERN using JavaScript library D3.js, readily available [2] or another programming tool. In this tool, the student would integrate a feature which not only identifies the expected yields for the beam of interest, but also the possible isobaric contaminants expected in the beam, based on the already calculated yields and chosen ion source. This analysis is valuable to determine the mass-resolving-power that the ISOL@MYRRHA mass separator needs to fulfill. The tool will be used for several show-cases of RIBs for which the users already expressed interest.

[1] “ISOLDE Yield Database Interactive nuclide chart ”https://isoyields2.web.cern.ch/IsoldeYieldChart.aspx”, (accessed February 2024)

[2] “NuclideChart Javascript tool for ISOLDE Yield Database” https://github.com/andreasmolander/NuclideChart (accessed February 2024)

The minimum diploma level of the candidate needs to be

• Professional bachelor
• Academic bachelor

The candidate needs to have a background in

• Informatics
• Physics

• Nuclear Engineering

Estimated duration

9 months

Expert group

Physics and Target Research