THE 2 MV TANDEM PELLETRON ACCELERATOR OF THE LOUVRE MUSEUM

The IBA facility of the Louvre Museum, code AGLAE, is based on the 6SDH-2 2 MV tandem Pelletron accelerator of NEC. A number of details of this machine have been specially designed with NEC to match the specific needs required for museum studies, i.e.: p, d, 3He, 4He, 15N beams from a single rf source, purely electrostatic focusing, halo-free submillimeter beam impacts, high-energy as well as low-energy operation at relatively high currents for resonance depth profiling of light nuclei including 1H, the possibility to automatize the machine operation as far as possible, development towards 14C AMS, and a microbeam extension. Special features of this machine include electrostatic steerers at the injection and electrostatic dog-leg steerers at the high-energy side, double slits at both sides of the accelerator, triplets instead of doublets for beam symmetry, turbomolecular recirculation of the stripper gas at the terminal, a new design of the stripper system itself, and a double feedback system with two capacitive pickoff plates for optimum energy spread and stability. The reasons of these special features will be explained and the characteristics of the machine as observed until now will be presented. © 1990.