The Use of Secondary Stripping in Tandem Accelerators

Electrostatic tandem accelerator systems are used all around the world for applications such as nuclear astrophysics, medical isotope production, and accelerator mass spectrometry. Within a positively charged terminal, each one is equipped with gas and/or foil stripping used to convert the negatively charged injected beam into a positively charged, high energy beam. The 10 MV FN Tandem at the University of Notre Dame's Nuclear Science Laboratory has the additional option for a second foil stripper to populate higher charge states and reach higher energies. A demonstration of the technique as well as measured charge state distributions will be presented. It was found that for most of the beams tested, secondary stripping allowed higher energies with higher yields than the terminal stripping alone could achieve.