SHIM 2015 Swift Heavy Ions in Matter

High energy proton microscopy (HEPM) or radiography is a novel technique for probing the interior of dense objects in static or dynamic experiments by mono-energetic beams of GeV-energy protons. A special system of magnetic lenses is employed for imaging and aberrations correction. Using this technique, one can measure the areal density distribution of a thick sample with sub-percent accuracy, micrometer-scale spatial and nanosecond-scale temporal resolutions. HEPM is of considerable interest for materials research, plasma physics, biophysics and medicine. The future PRIOR (Proton Microscope for FAIR) facility will use 1 - 10 GeV intense proton beams and will allow for a significant step forward in spatial (~ 10-15 µm) and temporal (~ 5-10 ns) resolution. A PRIOR prototype has been constructed and successfully commissioned at GSI in 2014 using 3.5 - 4.5 GeV intense proton beams from the SIS-18 synchrotron. The status of the PRIOR project and the first results obtained in static and dynamic experiments with the PRIOR prototype are presented.