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Bridging nuclear physics across energy scales: from neutrinoless double-beta decay to high-energy heavy-ion collisions
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Research article18 May 2026
Machine learning for beam correction study of the injection beamline at Wuhan Advanced Light Source
Wuhan Advanced Light Source (WALS), a fourth-generation synchrotron radiation light source operating at 1.5 GeV, is currently under design and will use a full-energy linear accelerator (LINAC) as the electron beam injector. The injection beamline adopts a three-stage scheme: first, the beam from the LINAC, which is 6 m below the storage ring, is horizontally deflected below the storage ring; second, it gradually climbs from underground to the same altitude as the storage ring; and third, the beam is delivered horizontally into the injection straight section inside the storage ring. Twiss parameter matching between the LINAC and storage ring was also completed. During the construction of the beamline, magnet manufacturing errors, installation errors, and beam injection errors from the LINAC will cause beam deviations from the predetermined ideal orbits and even particle losses. Therefore, electron beam correction is required during beam commissioning. In contrast to the single-plane beam correction used in general transfer lines, the horizontal and vertical directions of the beam are coupled in the WALS injection transfer line, which greatly increases the complexity and difficulty of beam correction. Machine learning technology has been extensively developed in recent years, and the powerful invertible neural network algorithm is expected to solve the beam commissioning challenge of the beam injection transfer line at the WALS. Therefore, an invertible neural network (INN) model has been designed and trained to simulate the beam transport and beam correction of the WALS injection beamline. By optimizing the number and positions of beam profile monitors, the accuracy of both bidirectional prediction and beam correction can be greatly improved. This method has important practical significance for the commissioning and operation of similar complex beam transport systems.
Yuan-Cun Nie, Hui Wang, Hao-Hu Li, Jia-Bao Guan, Yuan Chen, Ji-Ke Wang, Jian-Hua He
Research article18 May 2026
Development of an innovative real-time dosimetry monitoring system for heavy-ion radiotherapy
Cancer is the second leading cause of mortality globally. Radiation therapy is a critical technological approach in oncology treatment and includes conventional dose-rate radiation therapy, high-dose radiotherapy, and ultrahigh-dose-rate radiation therapy. Following the significant increase in radiotherapy dose rates, real-time dosimetry monitoring faces the dual challenge of enhancing both response time and measurement precision. In this study, we successfully developed a real-time dosimetry monitoring system for radiotherapy designed to accommodate a broad range of dose rates. The system consists of a dual-gated, integrator architecture, front-end and high-speed data-acquisition circuit, providing accurate detection of bipolar current pulse signals with peak values from -190 μA to +200 μA. The minimum current measurement range is -1 pA to 1 pA. Two major technological advancements were accomplished: first, the elimination of the signal processing dead time resulted in a reduction of the single-event readout time to 5 μs; second, the nonlinear error (ranging from -190 μA up to the maximum current value) is within 0.67%, with a linear correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.99992. Experiments were conducted using an ionization chamber detector at the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou. This system, combined with a dose detector, achieves real-time dose measurements within the dose-rate range of 65-120 Gy/min. Excellent real-time monitoring performance is demonstrated in the high-dose range of radiation therapy, demonstrating the system’s potential for additional use in dose monitoring for electron- and proton-beam radiotherapy applications.
Ling-Ling Liu, Qian-Shun She, Jie Kong, Jun-Wei Yan, Yu-Han Dou
Research article18 May 2026
Development and verification of a Monte Carlo dose calculation program “MagicDose” for boron neutron capture therapy
Dose calculation is the foundation of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). MagicDose, a dose calculation program for the BNCT treatment planning system, is developed based on the Monte Carlo method. First, the voxel phantom of the modified Snyder head with 16 and 8 mm is constructed, and the results from MagicDose and MCNP are presented as two-dimensional coordinate points (Xn, Yn), comparing their relationship relative to the y=x linear function, while analyzing their respective calculation time. A modified Snyder head phantom with a tumor at three different spatial resolutions of 16, 8, and 1 mm was constructed, and the depth-dose-rate curves and spatial distribution maps are analyzed. Finally, the patients’ head CT data were used for the application. The results indicate that the calculations from MagicDose and MCNP exhibit high consistency and demonstrate that MagicDose offers superior computational efficiency compared to MCNP, with improvements of approximately 31.24% and 28.65% at spatial resolutions of 16 and 8 mm, respectively. As the spatial resolution increased, the variability in the dose rate results decreased. The voxel size and number of threads are both inversely proportional to the calculation time. For the CT model, a voxel phantom with a spatial resolution of 1 mm×1 mm×1 mm is successfully constructed. The calculation results showed that the boron dose rate contribution significantly exceeds that of the other dose components, with the spatial distribution of the total relative biological effect dose rate clearly delineating the boundaries between the high- and low-dose-rate regions. The above results verify the correctness of MagicDose, which also provides a reference for optimizing the design of voxel phantoms for clinical treatment.
Tao Yu, Ai-Kou Sun, Cheng-Wei Liu, Zhen-Ping Chen, Ke-Kun Gao, Lin Zhu, Zhi-Qiang Wu, Chao Yang, Tong Liu, Song Wang, Zi-Zhu Zhang, Yi-Zheng Chong
CURRENT ISSUE
Nuclear Science and TechniquesVol.37, No.8
Cover Gallery
International Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics
Nuclear Physicist
Invited Review Articles
Table of Content
Research Story
Unraveling Asymmetric Collisions with Tsallis Thermodynamics
Speedy Nuclear Measurements for Cleaner Energy
Bromine's Neutron Capture and the s-Process
Nondestructive Neutron Techniques boosts Material Research and Preservation
Speedy Nuclear Measurements for Cleaner Energy
Advancing Particle Analysis with Intelligent Algorithms
Exploring Nuclear Energy with Lithium Reactions
Innovative Neutronics Modeling to Maximize Plutonium-238 Output
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Open Seminar in Frontier of Nuclear Physics
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