Response of a tungsten powder target to an incident high energy proton beam

TL;DR

This paper presents the first experimental study of how a static tungsten powder target responds to high energy proton beam pulses, including visual and vibrational data, at CERN's HiRadMat facility.

Contribution

It provides novel experimental data on tungsten powder's response to proton beams, comparing it with mercury interactions to enhance understanding of material behavior under extreme conditions.

Findings

High-speed videos captured perturbation dynamics.

Laser Doppler vibrometer measured container oscillations.

Comparison with mercury experiment highlights material differences.

Abstract

The experiment described in this paper is the first study of the response of a static tungsten powder sample to an impinging high energy proton beam pulse. The experiment was carried out at the HiRadMat facility at CERN. Observations include high speed videos of a proton beam induced perturbation of the powder sample as well as data from a laser Doppler vibrometer measuring the oscillations of the powder container. A comparison with a previous analogous experiment which studied a proton beam interaction with mercury is made