Tandem Van de Graaff
The Tandem Van de Graaff is an electrostatic accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory. It was the world's largest such facility when it was built in 1970. It can provide researchers with beams of more than 40 different types of ions, from hydrogen to iron, that have been completely stripped of their electrons. It consists of two 15 million volt electrostatic accelerators, each about 24 meters long.
Tandem Van de Graaff serves as the ion source for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Ions generated in the Tandem Van de Graaff travel through a 700-meter-long tunnel, the Tandem to Booster Line, to the Alternating Gradient Booster. The Booster delivers the ions to the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron, which further accelerates them before they enter the RHIC.
