MACHINA, the Movable Accelerator for Cultural Heritage In-situ Non-destructive Analysis: project overview

Over the years, transportable instrumentation for cultural heritage (CH) in situ measurements has noticeably widespread, due to logistic, economical and safety reasons. Ion beam analysis, a powerful set of analytical techniques, of great importance for CH, is instead carried out by using fixed instrumentation. To overcome this limit, the Italian national Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPD), started MACHINA, the Movable Accelerator for CH In-situ Non-destructive Analysis: the new generation of accelerators for art to build a transportable accelerator, compact, with strongly reduced weight, absorbed power and cost. MACHINA will be installed at the OPD and dedicated to CH. It will be moved to major conservation centres and museums, when needed. The INFN-CERN proposal, approved in December 2017, became operative in February 2018. 2018 was dedicated to the acquisition of material/instrumentations, to set up both a dummy accelerator (to test the vacuum system) and a vacuum chamber (to test the source). Due to COVID, in 2020 and 2021 the experimental work was slowed down, but we kept developing the control electronics/software and built the second-generation supporting structure. The HF-RFQ power supplies were integrated in October 2021. At the rise of 2022, after conditioning the cavities, we tested the system and in March 2022 we got the first extracted 2-MeV proton beam. In this paper, we present the structure of the MACHINA system, the approach followed and the main solutions adopted, with a special focus on the control system, and finally the first experimental results.

Automated summary

To address logistical, economic, and safety issues, Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, CERN, and Opificio delle Pietre Dure have developed a portable accelerator called MACHINA for in-situ non-destructive analysis of cultural heritage. Despite the slowdown caused by COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, they continued to develop the control electronics/software and built the second-generation supporting structure. In early 2022, they successfully tested the system and obtained the first extracted 2-MeV proton beam.