Rare Isotope Accelerator Driver Linac Research Articles

Automatic longitudinal tuning of a multiple-charge-state heavy-ion beam

A new procedure has been developed for automatic longitudinal tuning of a multiple-charge-state heavy-ion beam. It uses a matrix-based code to track the beam centroids and Twiss parameters of the individual charge state beams and a minimization code to minimize a goal function by adjusting the synchronous phases and field levels in the accelerating cavities. The procedure has been successfully tested in the case of the Rare Isotope Accelerator driver linac and proven to improve an original manual tune by significantly reducing beam losses. The procedure was also applied for fast retuning of the linac after one or more cavity failure and restoring the beam with limited beam loss.

Beam loss studies in high-intensity heavy-ion linacs

The proposed Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) Facility, an innovative exotic-beam facility for the production of high-quality beams of short-lived isotopes, consists of a fully superconducting 1.4 GV driver linac and a 140 MV postaccelerator. To produce sufficient intensities of secondary beams the driver linac will provide 400 kW primary beams of any ion from hydrogen to uranium. Because of the high intensity of the primary beams the beam losses must be minimized to avoid radioactivation of the accelerator equipment. To keep the power deposited by the particles lost on the accelerator structures below $1\text{ }\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{m}$, the relative beam losses per unit length should be less than ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}5}$, especially along the high-energy section of the linac. A new beam dynamics simulation code TRACK has been developed and used for beam loss studies in the RIA driver linac. In the TRACK code, ions are tracked through the three-dimensional electromagnetic fields of every element of the linac starting from the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source to the production target. The simulation starts with a multicomponent dc ion beam extracted from the ECR. The space charge forces are included in the simulations. They are especially important in the front end of the driver linac. Beam losses are studied by tracking a large number of particles (up to ${10}^{6}$) through the whole linac considering all sources of error such us element misalignments, rf field errors, and stripper thickness fluctuations. For each configuration of the linac, multiple sets of error values have been randomly generated and used in the calculations. The results are then combined to calculate important beam parameters, estimate beam losses, and characterize the corresponding linac configuration. To track a large number of particles for a comprehensive number of error sets (up to 500), the code TRACK was parallelized and run on the Jazz computer cluster at ANL.

Calculated intensity of high-energy neutron beams

The flux, energy and angular distributions of high-energy neutrons produced by in-flight spallation and fission of a 400 MeV/ A 238 U beam and by the break-up of a 400 MeV/ A deuteron beam are calculated. In both cases very intense secondary neutron beams are produced, peaking at zero degrees, with a relatively narrow energy spread. Such secondary neutron beams can be produced with the primary beams from the proposed rare isotope accelerator driver linac. The break-up of a 400 kW deuteron beam on a liquid-lithium target can produce a neutron flux of >10 10 neutrons/ cm 2/ s at a distance of 10 m from the target.

High-energy ion linacs based on superconducting spoke cavities

The applicability of superconducting TEM-class spoke cavities to high-energy ion linacs is discussed, and detailed designs for two TEM-class, triple-spoke-loaded superconducting niobium resonant cavities are presented. The 345 MHz cavities have a velocity range of $0.4<\ensuremath{\beta}<0.75$ and a beam aperture of 4 cm. Spoke-loaded cavities offer several advantages compared with the higher-frequency elliptical-cell cavities that are currently being developed for this range of particle velocities. The proposed triple-spoke cavities can provide broader velocity acceptance, more accelerating voltage per cavity, reduced heat-load operation at 4.2 K, and increased longitudinal acceptance through the high-energy section. Application to the proposed U.S. rare-isotope accelerator driver linac is discussed in detail.

Development of a medium-energy superconducting heavy-ion linac

The Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) facility project includes a cw 1.4 GeV driver linac and a 100 MV postaccelerator both based on superconducting (SC) cavities operating at frequencies from 48 to 805 MHz. In these linacs more than 99% of the total voltage is provided by SC cavities. An initial acceleration is provided by room temperature radio frequency quadrupoles. The driver linac is designed for acceleration of any ion species, from protons up to 900 MeV to uranium up to 400 MeV/u. The novel feature of the driver linac is an acceleration of multiple charge-state heavy-ion beams in order to achieve 400 kW beam power. This paper presents design features of a medium-energy SC heavy-ion linac taking the RIA driver linac as an example. The dynamics of single and multiple charge-state beams are detailed, including the effects of possible errors in rf field parameters and misalignments of transverse focusing elements. The important design considerations of such linac are presented. Several new conceptual solutions in beam dynamics in SC accelerating structures for heavy-ion applications are discussed.