Development of microbeam formation and single-ion hit technologies at the TIARA cyclotron

Yokota, Wataru; Sato, Takahiro; Kamiya, Tomihiro; Okumura, Susumu; Kurashima, Satoshi; Miyawaki, Nobumasa; Kashiwagi, Hirotsugu; Yoshida, Kenichi; Funayama, Tomoo; Sakashita, Tetsuya; Yokota, Yuichiro; Kobayashi, Yasuhiko; Onoda, Shinobu; Makino, Takahiro

The world's first microbeam focusing technology for heavy ions of hundreds MeV accelerated by a cyclotron has been developed at the TIARA facility in the Takasaki Advanced Radiation Research Institute of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. The technology enables us to form a microbeam of less than 1 m in diameter and to shoot a specified point on a target by one ion (single-ion hit) with spatial accuracy of microbeam size. In the course of the development, a cyclotron technology to accelerate a small energy-spread beam of hundres MeV, which is necessary for focusing to 1 m, has been developed as well as a beam focusing apparatus, beam size measurement and so forth based on the several-MeV microbeam/single-ion hit system of the TIARA electrostatic accelerators. Applicability of the technologies was examined by actual use in irradiation experiment and the result were fed back to them. This paper reports the process and the results of the development over ten years.