Generation of warm dense matter and strongly coupled plasmas using the High Radiation on Materials facility at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron

Abstract

A dedicated facility named High Radiation on Materials ͑HiRadMat͒ is being constructed at CERN to study the interaction of the 450 GeV protons generated by the Super Proton Synchrotron ͑SPS͒ with fixed solid targets of different materials. The main purpose of these future experiments is to study the generation and propagation of thermal shock waves in the target in order to assess the damage caused to the equipment, including collimators and absorbers, in case of an accident involving an uncontrolled release of the entire beam at a given point. Detailed numerical simulations of the beam-target interaction of several cases of interest have been carried out. In this paper we present simulations of the thermodynamic and the hydrodynamic response of a solid tungsten cylindrical target that is facially irradiated with the SPS beam with nominal parameters. These calculations have been carried out in two steps. First, the energy loss of the protons is calculated in the solid target using the FLUKA Nucl. Sci. Eng. 123, 169 ͑1996͔͒, which is based on a Godunov-type numerical scheme. The transverse intensity distribution in the beam focal spot is Gaussian. We consider three different sizes of the focal spot that are characterized by standard deviations, = 0.088, 0.28, and 0.88 mm, respectively. This study has shown that the target is severely damaged in all the three cases and the material in the beam-heated region is transformed into warm dense matter including a strongly coupled plasma state. This new experimental facility can therefore also be used for dedicated experiments to study high energy density matter.

Impact of high energy high intensity proton beams on targets: Case studies for Super Proton Synchrotron and Large Hadron Collider

“…5(c) shows that further temperature increase at t ¼ 15 is nominal and in fact the maximum temperature saturates around 9000 K. It is also seen that by this time the heating extends through the entire length of the target. This shows that the material in this region is severely damaged and is in the WDM regime [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…The primary purpose of the experiments suggested in this paper is to validate the existence of hydrodynamic tunneling that results from the hydrodynamic effects and to gain confidence with the methodology and simulation tools used. At later stages, other areas of research, for example, warm dense matter (WDM) and HED physics [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], may also benefit from this unique facility.…”

“…FLUKA: Energy deposition at solid density. BIG2: Hydrodynamic calculations along radius at one fixed point on axis [26] Hydrodynamic calculations in r-Z geometry, energy deposition in BIG2 normalized with axial line density (analytic approximation) [19] Hydrodynamic calculations along radius at one fixed point on axis [1] Hydrodynamic calculations in r-Z geometry, energy deposition in BIG2 normalized with axial line density (analytic approximation) [6] Hydrodynamic calculations in r-Z geometry, energy deposition in BIG2 normalized with axial line density (analytic approximation) [28] Hydrodynamic calculations in r-Z geometry running FLUKA and BIG2 codes iteratively [29] and (this paper, Sec. V)…”

The Large Hadron Collider and the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN as tools to Generate Warm Dense Matter and Non–Ideal Plasmas

“…The main use of this facility will be to test the consequences of beam impact on beam absorbers, collimators and other objects, which is mandatory for the design of such devices to be installed in LHC and other future accelerator facilities like FAIR, at Darmstadt [12]. These experiments therefore will be very useful to validate our simulations [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] that have been done for the LHC and the SPS beams. In addition to that, other areas of research including material sciences and High Energy Density (HED) states in matter including WDM and SCP [13-15, 17-26, 33, 34] will also benefit from these experiments.…”

“…This data is used as input to a two-dimensional hydrodynamic computer code, BIG2 [4], to study the hydrodynamic and the thermodynamic response of the target. These simulations have shown that the target is severely damaged in both cases [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. A very interesting and important outcome of this work has been that a large part of the target is converted into Warm Dense Matter (WDM) and Strongly Coupled Plasma (SCP) which suggests an additional application of the above two machines.…”