Ga PEAcH: A Portable Electrostatic Particle Accelerator

In collaboration with the University of North Georgia, we are constructing a portable linear electrostatic particle accelerator less than 2 meters in length. A target chamber was fabricated from stainless steel with a viewing port. Our Einzel Lens was aligned and installed. The chamber is electrically isolated to measure beam current. The system maintains a vacuum of $approx$$3.5 cdot 10^{-6}$ $torr$. The beam energy will be determined by the acceleration voltage. The accelerator will be tested through measurements of the 17 $MeV$ $gamma$-ray produced extit{via} $Li^7 +p xrightarrow{} Be^8 + gamma $ reactions. Low energy reactions are envisioned for both pure and applied physics research. We are in the process of developing a battery powered data acquisition system to record data using Raspberry Pi single board computers within the high voltage area. The data will be transmitted via WiFi to our data analysis computer.