TRIUMF - Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics

TRIUMF is at the south end of the UBC campus; it hosts hundreds of research physicists, including UBC faculty members and graduate students, thus allowing UBC Physics graduate students to conduct thesis research in an international scientific atmosphere. The facility is centred on the world's largest cyclotron, which accelerates H‾ ions to 500 MeV, providing intense proton, pion, and muon beams for studies of nucleon interactions, nuclear structure, electroweak interactions, medical imaging, and biophysics. The muon beam lines are the heart of a world-class Muon User Facility for condensed-matter studies.

The cyclotron also produces intense beams of rare short-lived isotopes for the ISAC (Isotope Separation and ACceleration) facility. This is the world's leading source of light short-lived isotope beams (A < 30), and since its commissioning in 2001 has supported experiments in nuclear astrophysics, nuclear structure, condensed-matter physics, and testing the Standard Model. ISAC-I, the first stage, consists of production target, ion source, mass separator, and two linear accelerators: a 35-MHz radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) linac accelerating beams with A/q ≤ 30 up to 150 keV/u, followed by an electron stripper and a 106-MHz drift-tube linac that provides beams fully variable in energy from 150 keV/u to 1.8 MeV/u for ions with A/q ≤ 6. Experimental facilities include the TRINAT atom trap, the TITAN ion trap, the TUDA detector array, and the 8π, DRAGON, and β-NMR spectrometers.

ISAC-II, the second stage, employs further stripping and a superconducting linac (SCL) to boost the ion energy to over 6.5 MeV/u for ions with A/q = 7. This linac, composed of bulk-niobium quarter-wave rf cavities, is itself being installed in stages. The first 20 MV of SCL was commissioned in 2006 and is delivering 3.5 MeV/u beams to experiments; the final 20 MV will be installed by 2009. An additional low-energy section is being designed, so that different isotopic beams can be delivered simultaneously to ISAC-I and ISAC-II experiments. High-energy experimental facilities include the EMMA and TIGRESS spectrometers, and the HERACLES detector array.

To maintain its competitive edge in beam performance, TRIUMF carries out a variety of advanced accelerator R&D using state-of-the-art test facilities. Particularly active areas include isotope-production targets, ion sources, charge-state boosting via electron cyclotron resonance (ECR), control of ion beams under strong space-charge forces (using a small cyclotron), high-field superconducting rf cavities, and beam diagnostics.

LADD - Laboratory for Advanced Detector Development