IN FOCUS: INTER-UNIVERSITY ACCELERATOR CENTRE (IUAC), NEW DELHI

Inter-University Accelerator Centre (IUAC), earlier known as Nuclear Science Centre (NSC), is an au­tonomous Inter-University Centre established in 1984 by the University Grants Commission (UGC) under the Ministry of Human Resource Develop­ment (MHRD). The centre, which came up as a green-field project, is spread over 25 acres of land provided by Jawaharlal Nehru University in Qutub Institutional Area of New Delhi, with a lush green, environmentally friendly campus. The construction of the Laboratory Complex and other infrastructure for establish­ing the centre started in 1986, and it was dedicated to the nation in 1990. It has since been fulfilling its mandate by providing research facilities round-the-clock to more than 700 research groups from nearly 160 universities, 85 colleges, and 60 other national laboratories. Till now, more than 1250 PhD scholars have completed their theses using the centre’s state-of-the-art research facilities. In the year 2005, the Nuclear Science Centre was renamed as Inter-University Accel­erator Centre (IUAC), which reflects its character and mandate.

The main aim of the centre has been to establish a national institute to pro­vide internationally competitive, front-ranking accelerator-based research facilities to researchers from Indian uni­versities, research institutes, and other national laboratories in many interdis­ciplinary fields. The centre was estab­lished, considering the great demand in the Indian research community, to not only provide accelerator-based research facilities but also to develop world-class accelerators and research programmes. Emphasis is laid on encouraging group activities and sharing of the facilities at the centre in synergy with those existing elsewhere in India and abroad.

USER SUPPORT WITH EXCELLENCE

With a focus on user support, IUAC endeavours to make every user feel wel­come and respected and encourages all to contribute towards achieving excellence while continually looking for ways to im­prove work, advance skills, and make the best use of its experience and talent. Even while celebrating individual strengths and talents, a collaborative environment is encouraged, acknowledging the fact that we achieve more by performing pio­neering research with national and global partners. Creativity is cherished while developing self-reliance through indige­nous development and implementing new ideas with courage and confidence for competitiveness. Acknowledging IUAC’s excellence in operation and maintenance of accelerator-based facilities, the centre has also been mandated to provide sup­port to other ion accelerator-based facili­ties and has proactively supported many such facilities.

ACCELERATOR HUB

IUAC has commissioned many types of accelerators, etc. The 15UD Pelletron Accelerator, operational since 1990, with terminal potential up to 16MV, is the biggest in India and one of the world’s about half-a-dozen operational large Tandem Accelerators. The super­conducting linear accelerator (SC Linac) at IUAC serves as a booster to the 15 UD Pelletron. The superconducting Linac consists of three accelerating modules, each housing eight Niobium Quarter Wave Resonators (QWR), and was de­signed and developed in the early 1990s in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), USA, and at present IUAC takes up its in-house production.

The multiply charged positive ion beam facility has been set up using an Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion source mounted on a 400-kV volt­age deck, whereas the negative ion ac­celerator (or implanter) facility provides negative ion beams up to 200 keV. The Rutherford Back-Scattering (RBS) fa­cility is based on a 1.7 MV Pelletron accelerator for the determination of elemental analysis. A new state-of-the-art 500 kV Pelletron accelerator-based Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) facility for radiocarbon dating has been established for dating or time-stamping of geological and prehistoric samples. The High Current Injector (HCI) project will accelerate the ion beam from the ECR source using normal temperature as an alternate injection system for the IUAC LINAC.

IUAC has also been sharing its ex­pertise in the development of various accelerator systems with other national and international labs. A collaboration ongoing with VECC, Kolkata, aims to fabricate cavities used in accelerator de­velopment for Fermilab under the Indian Institution and Fermilab Collaboration (IIFC), with IUAC contributing techni­cal expertise and SRF infrastructure.

PIONEERING ACCELERATOR-BASED INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

The research activities at the centre are credited with a major contribution to reviving nuclear physics research in In­dian universities. The Nuclear Physics programme covers almost all the current thrust areas with state-of-the-art experi­mental facilities. HYbrid Recoil mass Analyzer (HYRA) is a unique, state-of-the-art Recoil Mass Spectrometer/ Separator and is one of only five other gas-filled separators in the world for heavy element detection. The national facility for γ-spectroscopy, Indian Na­tional Gamma Array (INGA) consisting of 24 Compton-suppressed Ge Clover detectors, is one of the few large gamma detector arrays in the world and was cre­ated with a formal agreement between various institutions. National Array of Neutron Detectors (NAND) is an array of 100 liquid-scintillator-based neutron detectors and is one of the few large neu­tron detector arrays in the world.

Material Science research facilities include state-of-the-art in-situ XRD and Raman facilities, with similar facilities existing in only a few labs across the world. Heavy Ion Radiation Biology is an interdisciplinary applied science, and the radiation biology beamline at IUAC facilitates research in the effects of energetic charged particles on bio­logical systems at the molecular level. A unique cell line irradiation system, ASPIRE (Automatic Sample Positioning for Irradiation in Radiation Biology Ex­periments), is installed at the dedicated Radiation Biology beam-line.

INDIAN HERITAGE THROUGH SCIENCE: NATIONAL FACILITY FOR GEOCHRONOLOGY

Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) & High-Resolution Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer (HR-SIMS) with ancil­lary instruments facilities available at IUAC are capable of performing isotope research and dating an entire geological age spectrum from the youngest (years, kilo years) to the oldest (Hadean/Arche­an rocks ~billions of years and Meteor­ites), thus covering the geological history of the Earth, the Solar system down to the Neogene/Anthropocene. IUAC is setting up a National Geochronology Facility (NGF) with the support from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt of India, which is equipped with Accel­erator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) facil­ity for the measurement of 14C, 10Be and 26Al radio nuclides for different time scale measurements. Some of the initiatives undertaken are: 14C dating for archives and heritage chronology of documents of national importance preserved/maintained by the National Archives of India (NAI), bio-based as­sessments of essential oils, aromatics & flavour products, testing the content of biofuel in blended fuel, etc. This effort is in response to India’s commitment on international forums (COP28) to phase out energy dependency on fossil fuels and to achieve the target of Net zero.

FREE ELECTRON LASER

To address the growing demand for in­tense and coherent photon beams in In­dia, an accelerator-based photon source is being developed at IUAC. The facil­ity, named Delhi Light Source (DLS), is based on the principle of a Pre-bunched Free Electron Laser. An advanced fibre-laser system with a pulse width in the range of several hundred femtoseconds is being developed in collaboration with KEK Japan.

TOWARDS NATIONAL MISSIONS: ISRO PROJECTS

The missions undertaken by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) have been utilising IUAC’s Pelletron Facility for more than two decades. IUAC has made significant contribu­tions in many projects and several complex microelectronic devices, such as FPGAs, memories, control­lers, synthesisers, power converters, oscillators, detectors, Application Spe­cific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), etc., have been tested at IUAC for Chan­drayaan-1 & 2, Mars Orbiter Mission, Navigation & Disaster Management application missions, and Earth Ob­servation Missions.

Recently, several such devices were qualified for the prestigious na­tional space missions—Chandray­aan-3 and ADITYA-L1, Technology Demonstration Satellite-01 (TDS-01), OCEANSAT-3A and SPADEX.

ATMANIRBHAR BHARAT AND MAKE IN INDIA INITIATIVES

High Performance

Computing facility

In alignment with the initiatives for Atmanirbhar Bharat and Make in In­dia, IUAC has enhanced its computing infrastructure with the installation of a 3 PF supercomputing facility under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM-TAC), designated as ‘Virtual IUC for Supercomputing’, with techni­cal support from the CDAC team. This supercomputing system utilises Indian PARAM Rudra servers. The facility was formally dedicated to the nation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 26 September 2024. Users from multiple universities and institutes commenced utilising the facility for their computa­tional applications for research in Nu­clear Physics, Material Science, Atomic and Molecular Physics, Biology, and Artificial Intelligence, etc.

THE MEITY-FUNDED MRI PROJECT

IUAC has made a significant contri­bution to a project for developing a whole-body MRI magnet system in col­laboration with MEITY and CDAC. The magnet system was successfully energised to a strength of 1.5 T and stabilised at that level using an indige­nously developed Magnet Ramping Unit (MRU). The final tests for the MRI sys­tem are currently being planned before its commissioning at SAMEER (Society for Applied Microwave Electronics En­gineering & Research).

ELECTRONIC INSTRUMENTATION AND POWER SUPPLIES

IUAC has been proactively involved in the development of many electronic sub-systems used in data acquisition, and many of these import substitutions were designed and developed indigenously for the first time in India. Some of such devices are high-performance compact power supplies, VME Master control­ler for beam transport magnets, indig­enously designed double slit controllers, and various power supplies. The facili­ties also require a lot of custom-made electronics, interlocks, and control sys­tems solutions, which are not available off the shelf and hence are very expen­sive. IUAC has also fulfilled require­ments for many types of high-voltage/ high-current power supplies with in-house fabrication.

OUTREACH

Academic programmes

The Acquaintance Programme of IUAC is conducted in different parts of the country to make the local scientific com­munity aware of the IUAC programmes and facilities. IUAC conducts a two-se­mester PhD Programme every year for interested university research scholars. The outreach is strengthened by the or­ganisation of workshops, schools, and conferences on specialised topics. IUAC provides various opportunities to stu­dents at different levels to familiarise them with the programmes and facili­ties at IUAC including Orientation Pro­gramme for MSc students, and a sum­mer programme for BSc students. Visits of school/college students to the various facilities are arranged throughout the year at IUAC. IUAC has also taken the initiative in organising various work­shops and special courses on the Indian Knowledge system in line with the ob­jectives of the New Education Policy.

Experiments for Young Engineers and Scientists

As a part of IUAC’s outreach pro­gramme, a project ExpEYES (Experi­ments for Young Engineers and Scien­tists), with an objective of developing a computer-interfaced device capable of performing the role of a number of labo­ratories, and training college/university teachers in its usage and development of new experiments, is initiated.

THE WAY FORWARD

Accelerators are becoming increasingly vital in a wide array of applied fields such as medical science, archaeology, semiconductor technology, and quan­tum computing, while also making sig­nificant contributions to foundational interdisciplinary research. The Inter- University Accelerator Centre (IUAC) is committed to addressing these multi­faceted challenges by fostering a robust ecosystem. This initiative will focus on enhancing capacity building and spear­heading innovative research in interdis­ciplinary domains, ultimately paving the way for breakthroughs that can trans­form our understanding and utilisation of these cutting-edge technologies.