Calculation of rates for radioactive isotope beam production at TRIUMF

Access to new and rare radioactive isotopes is imperative for establishing fundamental knowledge and for its application in nuclear science. Rare Isotope Beam (RIB) facilities around the world, such as TRIUMF, work towards development of new target materials to generate increasingly exotic species, which are used in nuclear medicine, astrophysics and fundamental physics studies. At Simon Fraser University and TRIUMF, a computer simulation of the RIB targets used at the Isotope Separation and ACceleration (ISAC) facility of TRIUMF was built, to compliment existing knowledge and to support new target material development. The simulation was built using the GEANT4 nuclear transport toolkit, and can simulate the production rate of isotopes from user-defined beam and target characteristics. The simulation models the bombardment of a production target by an incident high-energy particle beam and calculates isotope production rates via fission, fragmentation and spallation. In-target production rates from the simulation were analysed and compared to production mechanisms within the simulation environment, other nuclear transport algorithms and to the experimentally measured yield rates from the ISAC yield station. Additionally, preliminary studies were conducted using these in-target production rates as illustrative examples, showing the capabilities and power of the simulation.