Recently, FRIB successfully completed beam-instrumentation testing. Beam instrumentation ensures that FRIB’s heavy-ion beam – the highest power heavy-ion beam in the world – doesn’t damage the linear accelerator.

FRIB will deliver up to 400 kilowatts of high-intensity and high-quality beam power to its target where rare isotopes will be created.

Beam instrumentation is commissioned in several stages. As commissioning continues, each stage will enable improvements to measurement and detection capabilities as beam intensity is increased. After beam-instrumentation devices are commissioned, they are used to learn about the behavior of the beam. This starts with a rough measurement and continues with a series of experiments.

As more demand is placed on accelerator facilities to push the boundaries of energy and intensity, specialized and larger amounts of instrumentation aid in more rapidly understanding the behavior of particle beams.

All beam-instrumentation systems must work in concert with each other. Many technical disciplines are part of delivering well-designed and functioning beam instrumentation, including accelerator, nuclear, and material scientists; electrical, mechanical, and controls engineers; vacuum technicians, and more.

Over time, beam instrumentation will be further improved. Final validation begins with beam commissioning, which began in early 2017 with the front end, and continued in summer 2018 with the linear accelerator. Only a few systems remain for beam testing, which will begin in 2019.