The K500 Cyclotron
Designed and built at the NSCL, the K500 cyclotron was the world’s first superconducting cyclotron. It is a “heavy-ion accelerator,” so called because it accelerates ions of elements heavier than protons—in fact, it accelerates ions of any element in the periodic table. The K500 became a prototype for similar accelerators built later at other laboratories around the world. It was with this machine that the NSCL research program was carried out from 1982 to 1989, when the newer, higher energy K1200 cyclotron became the main accelerator for research.
Now, the K500 is the injector cyclotron in the NSCL’s new coupled-cyclotron operation. It speeds ions up to about 10 percent of the speed of light before they are injected into the bigger K1200 cyclotron.
The K500 is 10 feet in diameter, and the magnet is 7 feet, 2 inches tall, with a magnetic field that can be tuned between 3 and 5 tesla (60,000 to 100,000 times the earth's magnetic field).
Operation of NSCL as a national user facility is supported by the Experimental Nuclear Physics Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation.