A New Probe to the High-Intensity Frontier: Soreq Applied Research Accelerator Facility (SARAF).

For the first time, a 1.5-mm thick windowless liquid lithium jet was bombarded with a 1-2 mA beam of ~1.9 MeV protons, just above the neutron production threshold in lithium (1.880 MeV), to produce an unprecedented rate of ~3-5 × 10 SP 10 sp n/sec, which irradiated a secondary target of interest (Figure 2, left). Simulated neutron energy spectrum from natGa, the main component (more than 80% of atoms) of the GaIn target, when irradiated by 40 MeV deuterons, normalized to a total yield of 2.7 × 1014 n/sec/mA. High-intensity neutron beams and large amounts of radioactive nuclei are powerful tools for exploring uncharted areas of basic and applied science. Right: Measured neutron energy spectra for 7Li(p,n)7Be from narrow and broad energy proton beams, compared to a Maxwellian distribution of kT = 28 keV. [Extracted from the article]