Considerations on the design of a rare isotope beam facility based on superconducting heavy ion linacs

Abstract

To establish an accelerator facility based on superconducting linear accelerator (linac) for nuclear and applied sciences in Korea, the rare isotope science project started in December 2011 under the auspices of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS). The layout of the facility has been mostly frozen since 2013 and civil construction began in 2016. On the other hand, an alternative linac design option was recently investigated in collaboration with the linac development group of Argonne National Lab in search of a further optimized configuration. A new linac lattice was developed and evaluated against realistic machine errors using TRACK. The beam optics simulations and error analysis then proved the soundness of this alternative design. In addition, beam optics of the injector was studied for simultaneous acceleration of both stable and rare isotope beams with the use of an electron beam ion source (EBIS). Also considered are alternative options of high-power cyclotrons as ISOL driver in order to enhance the capability of rare isotope beam production and fully exploit the superconducting linac facility built at high cost.