First Phase of Heavy Ion Acceleration at the Bevatron

Abstract

High Energy Heavy-Ion Beams have become a standard operational feature of the Bevatron. A diver-sified experimental program using these beams complement the traditional proton-physics program, and at present accounts for about one-quarter of the Bevatron operation time. Beams of ion species up to mass number 20 (neon), and with intensities up to 108 particles per pulse for carbon, are available on target in the extracted beam channel. Initial heavy-ion operation began a year-and-one-half ago and for the most part utilized existing Bevatron features and capabilities. Acceleration of ion species heavier than helium-ions, however, required the adaptation of a side-extracted PIG ion-source to the Bevatron pre-injector. The immediate success of this development effort and the concomitant demand for experimental beam time motivated an improvement program to provide higher beam intensities, improved beam control and monitoring, and closed-loop beam control for intensities as low as 106 particles per pulse. Single particle beam dynamics has been invest igated. Predicted operation settings based on these studies are found to be close to actual running parameters. Losses due to recomibination are well explained with existing theories for single electron capture.