A New High-intensity Proton Irradiation Facility at the CERN PS East Area

The proton and mixed-field irradiation facilities in the CERN PS East Area (known as IRRAD1 and IRRAD2), were heavily and successfully used for irradiation of particle detectors, electronic components and materials since 1992. These facilities operated with particle bursts - protons with momentum of 24GeV/c - delivered from the PS accelerator in “spills” of about 400ms (slow extraction). With the increasing demand of irradiation experiments, these facilities suffered from a number of restrictions such as the space availability, the maximum achievable particle flux and several access constraints. In the framework of the AIDA project, an upgrade of these facilities has been realized during the CERN long shutdown (LS1). While the new proton facility (IRRAD) will continue to be mainly devoted to the radiation hardness studies for the High Energy Physics (HEP) experimental community, the new mixed-field facility (CHARM) will mainly host irradiation experiments for the validation of electronic systems used in accelerators such as the LHC. In this paper, we outline the characteristics of the new IRRAD proton facility in terms of layout, area equipment and potential for new irradiation experiments.