Speaker
Description
Patient irradiation with mixed 4He2+ and 12C6+ ion beams, whose m/q only differ by 0.065%, is a promising proposal for online monitoring in carbon ion therapy. Over the past two years, major developments enabled the generation of such beams at MedAustron, marking the first mixed species beam delivery at a clinical synchrotron facility. These beams are now used for accelerator, detector, and medical physics research.
This contribution reviews the two-year development program that enabled mixed beam delivery and the first successful mixed beam imaging experiments at MedAustron. At the core is a new double multiturn injection scheme, which allows mixed beams with adjustable mixing ratios to be generated by sequentially merging both ion species in the synchrotron. Maintaining a stable He:C ratio throughout slow extraction required further developments, including tailored RF knockout excitation signals. To support these advances, dedicated diagnostic tools needed to be developed to characterize the mixed beam both in the synchrotron and the experimental room. A highlight in this context is a new non-invasive method that determines the He:C mixing ratio in the synchrotron from the RF radial loop correction.
Overall, these developments now enable the reproducible delivery and characterization of mixed beams with adjustable properties, which paves the way for continued progress in the field of mixed ion beam acceleration and application.
Funding Agency
Austrian Ministry of Education, Science, and Research; RTI-Strategy Lower Austria 2027
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