ACTAR TPC detector ready for its first physics experiment at GANIL

After a four-year period of R&D financed by an ERC grant, the next-generation active target of GANIL, ACTAR TPC, is now ready to be operated in-beam.

Compared to its predecessor MAYA, ACTAR TPC is capable of multiparticle tracking thanks to a high-density pad plane. The 128 x 128 two-millimeter side pads of the charge projection plane of ACTAR TPC are connected to GET (General Electronics for TPCs) digital electronics, offering 8 megavoxels to perform the three-dimensional tracking of charged particles produced in the nuclear reactions occurring in the gaseous volume of the detector.

The active target was commissioned in November 2017 studying the resonant reactions 18 O (p,p’) and 18O(p,a). A first physics experiment is foreseen in 2018. This experiment will aim to study the 2p decay branches of excited states in 18Ne through the resonant scattering of 17F on a proton target.