A cooler-buncher for the N=126 factory at Argonne National Laboratory

The N=126 factory currently under construction at Argonne National Laboratory’s ATLAS facility will make use of multi-nucleon transfer reactions to produce nuclei around the N=126 shell closure that are of interest for the study of the rapid neutron capture process and are not available in sufficient quantities using common particle-fragmentation, target-fragmentation, or fission production techniques. As part of this facility, a radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) buncher will cool and accumulate the beam, converting a high-emittance, continuous beam into a low-emittance bunched beam suitable for trapping. Here, the construction of the RFQ cooler-buncher, based on the design used at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory’s BECOLA and EBIT cooler-bunchers, will be discussed. This design features injection optics optimized to maximize acceptance, separated cooling and bunching regions, and a simplified RFQ electrode construction.