Physics at the Munich Tandem Accelerator Laboratory

TL;DR

This review summarizes a decade of diverse scientific research at the Munich tandem accelerator, including nuclear physics, astrophysics, material analysis, radiobiology, and medical applications, highlighting technological and methodological advancements.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental techniques and scientific results achieved at the Munich tandem accelerator across multiple fields over ten years.

Findings

Advances in nuclear structure and astrophysics studies.

Development of sensitive detection methods for radionuclides.

Application of ion microbeam for 3D hydrogen microscopy and radiobiology.

Abstract

This review reports on the science performed in various fields at the Munich tandem accelerator during the past decade. It covers nuclear structure studies, also with respect to astro- and particle physics as well as for the understanding of fundamental symmetries, the extremely sensitive detection of long-lived radionuclides from Supernova or r-process production with accelerator mass spectrometry and studies of the elemental composition of thin films with extreme depth resolution and sensitivity by elastic recoil detection (ERD). The ion microbeam is used for 3D hydrogen microscopy as well as in radiobiology to study the response of living cells on well-defined irradiations. In medical research new therapeutic methods of tumour irradiation are tested using proton minibeams as well as the determination of ion ranges in tissue with iono-acoustics. Primary and secondary beams from the accelerator are also used for development and testing of detector components in large setups, e.g. at the LHC, and for testing new kinds of fuel materials of high uranium density to use them as medium enriched fuels at the Munich research reactor FRM II in the future.