An optical transition of 3489 A has been shown to arise from Li using beam foil spectroscopic technique. The mean life of the state emitting this radiation has been measured to be 2.23 ä 0.08 n sec.

Design and construction details of a horizontal 2 MV Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator built at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre are given. A terminal voltage of 2.15 MV has been achieved. Energy analysed Corona stabilized beams of protons and oxygen ions have been obtained. Experiments have been carried out to test the performance of the accelerator.

An accelerating tube has been designed and fabricated. Ion optical properties with different input beam geometries for 25 keV protons have been studied. An optimum voltage gradient in the first few sections required to obtain a focussed beam is determined. The tube has been installed in the 2 MV tandem accelerator built at Trombay and the performance of the tube is discussed.

A semi-empirical model, based on the hard sphere system, is used to determine the entropy of mixing of simple as well as compound-forming alloys. For the compound-forming liquid solutions, the method leads to fairly accurate results, showing thereby that the usual theory of hard spheres mixtures can be applied to compound forming alloys also. It has been shown that the compound formation is very sensitive to the temperature of the mixture. Numerical applications are attempted for NaHg and NaGa.

Design details of a 100 MeV proton linear accelerator (Alvarez system) operating at a resonating frequency of 400 MHz have been studied. Increase in the linac operating frequency has become feasible with the possibility of injecting protons from a radio frequency quadrupole accelerator with energies higher than the conventional pre-injectors. Various electrical parameters of such a system have been calculated and compared with the existing linac injectors operating at 200 MHz.

The measurements of fission fragment angular distributions for the system¹⁹F+²³²Th have been extended to the sub-barrier energies of 89.3, 91.5 and 93.6 MeV. The measured anisotropies, within errors are nearly the same over this energy region. However, the deviation of the experimental values of anisotropies from that of standard statistical model predictions increases as the bombarding energy is lowered.

The electronic structure of substitutional non-magnetic impurities Cu, Ag, Cd, Mg, Zn, Ga, In, Ge, Si and Sn in Al is studied using density functional theory. A simple physical model is proposed to calculate the effective charges on impurities in trivalent metal Al. A linear relation is found between the effective charges on impurities and impurity vacancy capture radii. The spherical solid model (SSM) is used to account for discrete nature of the host. The impurity-induced change in charge density, scattering phase shifts, host-impurity potential, residual resistivity and impurity self-energy are calculated. Higher order scattering phase shifts are found significant and the host-impurity potential is found proportional to effective charge on impurity in its vicinity. The self-consistently calculated potential is used to calculate the electric field gradients (EFGs) at the first and second nearest neighbours (1NNs, 2NNs) of impurity. The calculated values are in agreement with the experimental results.

The folded tandem ion accelerator (FOTIA) project at BARC has been commissioned. The analysed carbon beams of 40 nA(3⁺) and 25 nA(4⁺), at terminal voltage of 2.5 MV with N₂ + CO₂ as insulating gas, were obtained. The beams were characterized by performing the Rutherford back scattering (RBS) on gold, tin and iron targets. The beam energy of 12.5 MeV for ¹²C⁴⁺ was consistent with the terminal voltage of 2.5 MV. The N₂ + CO₂ mixture is being replaced by SF₆ gas in order to achieve 6 MV on the terminal. In this paper, some of the salient features of the FOTIA and its present status are discussed.

The beam optics of the 6 MV folded tandem ion accelerator, that has recently been commissioned at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, is presented. Typical beam trajectories for proton and ¹²C beams under different conditions, are shown. The constraints on the design due to the use of the infrastructure of the Van de Graaff accelerator, which existed earlier, are discussed.

The folded tandem ion accelerator (FOTIA) facility set up at BARC has become operational. At present, it is used for elemental analysis studies using the Rutherford backscattering technique. The beams of¹H, ⁷Li, ¹²C, ¹⁶O and ¹⁹F have been accelerated up to terminal voltages of about 3 MV and are available for experiments. The terminal voltage is stable within ±2 kV. In this paper, present status of the FOTIA and future plans are discussed.

A terminal voltage stabilization system for the folded tandem ion accelerator (FOTIA) was developed and is in continuous use. The system achieves good voltage stabilization, eliminates ground loops and noise interference. It incorporates a correcting circuit for compensating the mains frequency variations in the GVM amplifier circuit. The present system has two modes of operation namely GVM control mode and slit control mode. A voltage stability of about ± 2 kV has been achieved. In this paper, some of the salient features of the voltage stabilization system are discussed.