Inside HIAF: China's new heavy-ion accelerator starts trials

[00:00:00]Atoms become ions when they lose electrons. Accelerators use electric and magnetic fields to push ions faster and faster until they race around the ring at nearly light speed. Then these ions smash [music] into targets, recreating supernova explosions or Big Bang conditions to help scientists uncover the secrets of matter.

[00:00:22]That's what HIAF does, the high-intensity heavy ion accelerator.

[00:00:27]The facility in southern China delivers the world's highest pulse beam intensity for heavy ions.

[00:00:35]>> Heavy ions generally refer to positively charged ions formed when atoms with a mass number greater than four, which is heavier than helium, lose all or part of their electrons.

[00:00:48]High-intensity means an extremely high particle density, emitting hundreds of billions of heavy ions per pulse, and accelerating them to near light speed for research.

[00:00:59]>> Spanning 80 acres, HIAF features a 2-km beam line situated 13 m underground.

[00:01:06]This is it. I'm inside here, one of the world's most advanced heavy ion accelerator facilities. Well, behind me is the booster ring, a circular synchrotron about 569 m. After 7 years of construction, this facility has achieved the full beam commissioning since October last year. That's where I am, in one section of the HIAF accelerator system. Altogether, this facility houses about 6,000 major equipment units, 5 million parts, and over a million meters of piping.

[00:01:39]To make it all work, close coordination and all-chain innovation are needed.

[00:01:47]>> The accelerator ring has 48 bending magnets and 78 focusing magnets.

[00:01:53]The bending magnets steer the ion beam around every curve to keep it on track.

[00:01:58]Each magnet core is built from thin silicon steel sheets stacked together.

[00:02:02]And they are water-cooled with diagonal supports to hold everything steady, ensuring the beam doesn't wander off.

[00:02:09]>> The power supply of that bending magnet is critical. The team built a world's first a fast cycling pulse the power supply that handles both lightning fast occurring changes and razor sharp precision. It can ramp up current at 38,000 amperes per second, the fastest globally, while keeping the tracking error under 0.2 amperes.

[00:02:31]The supply also recovers energy.

[00:02:40]>> electric car. When you hit the accelerator, it speeds up fast, but you also want to avoid jolting the engine.

[00:02:47]That's why we added a big energy storage unit inside. During rapid startup, the storage delivers a huge burst of power.

[00:02:54]During braking, it recovers and stores the energy for the next run. This design cuts the impact on the power grid by 15 times, keeping the grid stable and making the system green and efficient.

[00:03:06]>> HEFEI's innovations also include an incredibly clean vacuum chamber. It's a highway for beams to avoid gas collisions and reach near light speed.

[00:03:15]It's so clean its pressure is as low as that on the surface of the moon.

[00:03:23]>> Our ultra-thin wall vacuum chamber with a skeleton liner, the first of its kind, was highly praised by Fritz Caspers, a renowned accelerator expert at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, who called it innovative and recommended it be named the China Chamber for future international adoption.

[00:03:42]>> So, what will this super microscope actually do?

[00:03:48]>> People may think heavy ion accelerators are just high-tech showpieces, and they are being world leading but they also have real-world impacts. We can test satellites by simulating cosmic rays and breed better crops with higher yield and quality through ion induced mutation. In medicine, HEAF will advance heavy ion cancer therapy and the development of novel medical isotope drugs.

[00:04:12]>> The first experiments are expected before the end of this year. For now, this national treasury is more than ready and the scientific community is watching with anticipation.

[00:04:21]This is in CGTM from the HEAF site in Huizhou, Guangdong province.