Secondary Ion Beams

TL;DR

Secondary ion beams are generated by bombarding targets with primary particles, enabling the production of unstable particles for research, through methods like ISOL, fragmentation, or particle-antiparticle creation.

Contribution

This paper reviews the production methods of secondary ion beams, highlighting techniques for generating unstable particles not suitable for direct ion source use.

Findings

Different methods of secondary ion beam production are compared.

Secondary beams include decay products like muons and neutrinos.

Techniques enable research with unstable particles.

Abstract

Secondary ion beams are beams of particles produced by bombarding a production target with a primary beam of a stable nuclide (in most cases protons) or by fragmentation of heavy primary particles. These methods are used for short lived, instable particles which cannot be introduced into the ion source (or used as target). The secondary beam particles can be produced i) by bombarding a heavy, stable element in a second ion source (ISOL method), ii) by fragmentation of heavy beam particles, or iii) by creation of particle-antiparticle pairs (e.g. pions or antiprotons). Beams of decay products from secondary beams (e.g. muons or neutrinos from pion decay) can be considered as tertiary beams.