Development of an optical method for temperature measurements of the ISAC targets at TRIUMF

The temperatures of isotope separator on-line targets play an important role for the overall target performance, including the yield of the radioactive ion beams and the target lifetime. At TRIUMF an optical technique is being developed to obtain accurate real-time temperature feedback from ISAC and in the future ARIEL targets during beam delivery. The light emitted from within the hot tantalum target container is captured and transmitted into a spectrometer via an ionizer opening. For accurate results an absolute irradiance calibration of the spectrometer is performed to determine the spectral power density. Then, to analyze the light spectra and calculate the maximum temperature, two mathematical methods have been applied. These methods are first evaluated using the spectrum of a light source with a known colour temperature. One method is selected and applied to a tantalum target container heated off-line at nominal temperatures and cross-checked with a thermocouple. The results of the test are in close agreement with the temperatures read by the thermocouple. This paper describes the calibration of the optical system, the methods applied, along with their results and validations. This tech-nique will be applied to the on-line targets and correlate isotope releases with target temperatures for optimizing the delivery of short-lived radioisotopes species.