The LIGHT (Linac for Image-Guided Hadron Therapy) project was initiated to develop a modular proton accelerator delivering beam with energies up to 230 MeV for cancer therapy. The machine consists of three different kinds of accelerating structures: RFQ (Radio-Frequency Quadrupole), SCDTL (Side Coupled Drift Tube Linac) and CCL (Coupled Cavity Linac). These accelerating structures operate at 750 MHz (RFQ) and 3 GHz (SCDTL, CCL). The accelerator RF signals are generated, distributed, and controlled by a Low-Level RF (LLRF) system. The LIGHT LLRF system is based on a commercially available solution from Instrumentation Technologies with project specific customization. This LLRF system features high amplitude and phase stability, monitoring of the RF signals from the RF network and the accelerating structures at 200 Hz, RF pulse shaping over real-time interface integrated, RF breakdown detection, and thermal resonance frequency correction feedback. The LLRF system control is integrated in a Front-End Controller (FEC) which connects it to the LIGHT control system. In this contribution we present the main features of the AVO LLRF system, its operation and performance.
This report presents a design of a gantry for proton therapy based on the concept of adiabatic transition. The use of fixed-field alternating gradient magnets allows a large momentum acceptance and supports fast energy modulation. The optical performance of the gantry has been analysed using a beam tracking code. Several optimisations of the lattice and transition sections have been investigated to reduce size and ensure applicability to pencil beam scanning. Matching of the full energy range results in an increase in the size of the gantry, but reduces the weight and cost significantly compar…
The continue wave (CW) high current proton linac has wide applications as the front end of the high power proton machines. The low energy part is the most difficult one and there is no widely accepted solution yet. Based on the analysis of the focusing properties of the CW low energy proton linac, a 10 MeV low energy normal conducting proton linac based on equidistant seven-gap Cross-bar H-type (CH) cavities is proposed. The linac is composed of ten 7-gap CH cavities and the transverse focusing is maintained by the quadrupole doublets located between cavities. The total length of the linac is …
Using the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) linac as the injector, a 500 MeV proton synchrotron is proposed for multidisciplinary application, such as biology, material and proton therapy. The synchrotron will deliver proton beam with energy from 80 MeV to 500 MeV. A compact lattice design was worked out, and all the important beam dynamics issues were investigated. The 80 MeV H- beam is stripped and injected into the synchrotron by using multi-turn injection. In order to continuously extraction the proton with small beam loss, the achromatic structure is proposed and slow extraction meth…
The paper considers an opportunity of detecting explosives by using radiation capture of a neutron with nitrogen nucleus. Proton LINAC is offered as the neutron source with the following parameters: proton energy five Mega electron Volts , beam pulse current one and seven-tenths milliampere, duration of the current pulse two hundreds microseconds, repetition rate fifty Hertz. The reaction in which neutrons are formed is lithium (p,n) beryllium. It is shown that this neutron source will have the intensity of ten to the twelfth degree neutron per second that will allow one to detect explosives o…
A Hybrid single cavity (HSC) linac, which is formed by combining a radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) structure and a drift tube (DT) structure into one interdigital-H (IH) cavity, is fabricated and assembled as a proof of principle (PoP) type injector for cancer therapy synchrotron according to the series researches. The injection method of the HSC linac adopt a direct plasma injection scheme (DPIS), which is considered to be the only method for accelerating an intense current heavy ion beam produced by a laser ion source (LIS). The input beam current of the HSC was designed to be 20 milliamper…
Fermilab is developing a Proton Improvement Plan (PIP) to increase throughput of its proton source. The plan addresses hardware modifications to increase repetition rate and improve beam loss while ensuring viable operation of the proton source through 2025. The first phase of the PIP will enable the Fermilab proton source to deliver 1.8e17 protons per hour by mid-2013. As part of this initial upgrade, Fermilab plans to install a new front-end consisting of dual H- ion sources and a 201 MHz pulsed RFQ. This paper will present beam studies measurements of this new front-end and discuss new beam…
The continue wave (CW) high current proton linac has wide applications as the front end of the high power proton machines. The low energy part is the most difficult one and there is no widely accepted solution yet. Both normal conducting and superconducting acceleration structures are thought to be the possible solutions. Although the characteristics of normal conducting structures and superconducting ones are quite different, such as acceleration voltage, maximum electric field and so on, we found the focusing properties of the lattice composed by these two acceleration structures are quite s…
Active discussion on the high energy physics priorities in the US carried out since summer of 2013 resulted in changes in Fermilab plans for future development of the existing accelerator complex. In particular, the scope of Project X was reduced to the support of the Long Base Neutrino Facility (LBNF) at the project first stage. The name of the facility was changed to the PIP-II (Proton Improvement Plan). This new facility is a logical extension of the existing Proton Improvement Plan aimed at doubling average power of the Fermilab's Booster and Main Injector (MI). Its design and required R&D…
PIP-II is an essential upgrade of the Fermilab complex that will enable the worlds most intense high-energy beam of neutrinos for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at LBNF and support a broad physics program at Fermilab. Ultimately, the PIP-II superconducting linac will be capable of accelerating the $H-$ CW beam to 800 MeV with an average power of 1.6 MW. To operate the linac with such high power, beam losses and beam emittance growth must be tightly controlled. In this paper, we present the results of global optimization of the Linac options towards a robust and efficien…
A microwave ion source is used as an ion source of 100-MeV proton accelerator at Korea Multipurpose Accelerator Complex (KOMAC). The specifications of the ion source are 50 keV in energy and 20 mA in peak current. The plasma is operated in CW mode using magnetron and the pulse beam is extracted using semiconductor switch located in the extraction power supply. The beam characteristics were measured based on the pulse voltage and current. A test stand was also installed to study the beam characteristics of the ion source in off-line. In this paper, the pulse beam characteristics of the ion sour…
The article considers an opportunity of simultaneous pulsed acceleration of seven proton beams with current one hundred milliamps in each beam. The accelerator consists of two parts. In the first part of the accelerator having the length five meters, the protons are accelerated to the energy of mega electron Volts. Consumption of high-frequency power by this part of the accelerator is equal to mega Watts. In the second part of the accelerator having the length fifty meters, the protons are accelerated to the finite energy eighty mega electron Volts. Consumption of the high frequency power by t…
The Fermilab Proton Improvement Plan (PIP) was formed in late 2011 to address important and necessary upgrades to the Proton Source machines (Injector line, Linac and Booster). The goal is to increase the proton flux by doubling the Booster beam cycle rate while maintaining the same intensity per cycle, the same uptime, and the same residual activation in the enclosure. For the Linac, the main focus within PIP is to address reliability. One of the main tasks is to replace the present hard-tube modulator used on the 200 MHz RF system. Plans to replace this high power system with a Marx-topology…
The Proton Improvement Plan-II (PIP-II) [1] has been developed at Fermilab to provide powerful proton beams to the laboratorys experiments. An 800-MeV superconducting linear accelerator-a centerpiece of the project-is currently under construction in Batavia, Illinois (USA). After completion, the superconducting linac will be the starting point for the 1.2 MW (Phase 1) and 2.4-MW (Phase 2) proton beam that is needed for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) at Fermilab [2]. Due to unavoidable loss of a fraction of the beam in the accelerator components, a certain level of radiation will be…
The main `bottleneck' limiting the beam power in circular machines is caused by space charge effects that produce beam instabilities. To increase maximally the beam power of a `proton driver', it is proposed to build a facility consisting solely of a 2.5-GeV injector linac (PI) and a 20-GeV pulsed superconducting linac (SCL). Such a facility could be constructed using the existing KEK accelerator infrastructure. The PI, based on the European Spallation Source (ESS) linac, would serve both as an injector to the SCL and a source of proton beams that could be used to copiously produce, e.g., neut…
The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) Linac has been in operation for 52 years. In approximately four years, it will be replaced by a new 800 MeV superconducting machine, the PIP-II SRF Linac. In the current configuration, the Linac delivers H- ions at 400 MeV and injects protons by charge exchange into the Booster synchrotron. Despite its age, the Linac is the most stable accelerator in the FNAL complex, reliably sending 22 mA in daily operations. We will discuss the status of the operation, beam studies, and plans.
In a cyclotron-based proton therapy facility, the energy changes are performed by means of a degrader of variable thickness. The interaction of the proton beam with the degrader creates energy tails and increases the beam emittance. A precise model of the degraded beam properties is important not only to better understand the performance of a facility already in operation, but also to support the development of new proton therapy concepts. The exact knowledge of the degraded beam properties, in terms of energy spectrum and transverse phase space, depends on the model used to describe the proto…
In this paper, we give some guidelines for the design of linear accelerators, with special emphasis on their use in a hadron therapy facility. We concentrate on two accelerator layouts, based on linacs. The conventional one based on a linac injecting into a synchrotron and a all-linac solution based on high gradient high frequency RF cavities.
Significant transient beam loading effects were observed during beam commissioning tests of prototype II of the injector for the Accelerator Driven Sub-critical (ADS) system, which took place at the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, between October and December 2014. During these tests experiments were performed with CW operation of the cavities with pulsed beam current, and the system was configured to make use of a prototype digital low level radio frequency (LLRF) controller. The system was originally operated in pulsed mode with a simple PID feedback control algorit…
This contribution describes general concepts for control and safety systems in proton therapy. These concepts are illustrated by concrete examples implemented in the Proscan facility at PSI.
In order to dissipate long-lived radioactive waste, not only high ux proton accelerator but also electron linac have been proposed. A proton accelerator directly induces nuclear fission and mutation. On the other hand, electron beam has two processes: production of gamma rays through bremsstrahlung and produced gamma rays are available for the (gamma ; n) reaction. Protons dissipate nuclei and simultaneously newly produce radioisotopes of by-products. Since an electron linac produces less radioactive wastes, we focus only an electron linac with high beam intensity more than 1-Ampere. To reduce…
Effective and accurate computer simulations are highly important in accelerator design and production. The most difficult and important task in cyclotron development is magnetic field simulations. It is necessary to achieve the accuracy of the model that is higher than the tolerance for the magnetic field in the real magnet. An accurate model of the magnet and other systems of the cyclotron allows us to perform beam tracking through the whole accelerator from the ion source to extraction. While high accuracy is necessary in the late stages of research and development, high performance of the s…
The Proton Improvement Plan II (PIPII) is a superconducting linear accelerator being built at Fermilab that will provide 800 MeV proton beams for neutrino production. The Linac requires cooling at 80 K, 5 K, and 2 K temperatures, which will be provided by cryogenic helium produced by a Helium Cryoplant and distributed by a Cryogenic Distribution System (CDS). Based primarily on the Linac heat load requirements at each temperature and the allowable pressure drop, we have made a preliminary thermodynamic design of the CDS. The design also incorporates special requirements such as controlled and …
A beam dynamics design of 352.2 MHz Radio-Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) of Turkish Accelerator Center (TAC) project which accelerates continuous wave (CW) proton beam with 30 mA current from 50 keV to 3 MeV kinetic energy has been performed in this study. Also, it includes error analysis of the RFQ in which some fluctuations have been introduced to input beam parameters to see how the output beam parameters are affected, two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) electromagnetic structural design of the RFQ to obtain optimum cavity paramaters that agree with the ones of the beam dynamics. …
Due to its precision and limited side effects, the particle therapy of cancer is gaining popularity. The number of patients treated with protons and light ions reached 150,000 worldwide. There are currently more than 80 facilities, which offer this treatment and several dozen of new ones are in construction. Mostly they are cyclotron-based facilities, which provide proton beams, and only several are synchrotron-based facilities that provide both: proton and carbon-ion beams. The advantage of carbon ions is their higher efficiency in destroying the cancer cells, more localized shape of the Brag…
PIP-II is the Fermilab's flagship project for providing powerful, high-intensity proton beams to the laboratory's experiments. The heart of PIP-II is an 800-MeV superconducting linac accelerator. It will be located in a new tunnel with new service buildings and connected to the present Booster through a new transfer line. To support the design of civil engineering and mechanical integration, this paper provides preliminary estimation of radiation level in the gallery at an operational beam loss limit of 0.1 W/m, by means of Monte Carlo calculations with FLUKA and MARS15 codes.
To maximize the physics potential of future neutrino oscillation experiments, it is proposed to build a 15-MW `proton driver' consisitng solely of a 3-GeV proton injector linac (PI) and a 17-GeV superconducting ILC-type linac (SCL). The proposed facility would provide proton beams with intensities more than an order of magnitude higher than those at the existing proton synchrotron complexes. Multi-MW proton beams could also be used to produce high-intensity antiproton, `cold' neutron, kaon, pion and muon beams for a diverse program of experiments in particle and nuclear physics.
At the Ibaraki Neutron Medical Research Center, an accelerator-based neutron source for iBNCT (Ibaraki - Boron Neutron Capture Therapy) is being developed using an 8-MeV proton linac and a beryllium-based neutron production target. The proton linac consists of an RFQ and a DTL, which is almost the same as the front part of J-PARC linac. However, here only one high-power klystron is used as the RF source to drive the two cavities, which have quite different Q-values and responses. From June 2016, a cPCI based digital feedback system was applied to the iBNCT accelerator. It serves not only as a …
Despite the fact that the first-order beam dynamics models allow an approximated evaluation of the beam properties, their contribution is essential during the conceptual design of an accelerator or beamline. However, during the commissioning some of their limitations appear in the comparison against measurements. The extension of the linear model to higher order effects is, therefore, demanded. In this paper, the effects of particle-matter interaction have been included in the model of the transport lines in the proton therapy facility at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Switzerland. To imp…
Beam loss is a critical issue in high-intensity accelerators, and much effort is expended during both the design and operation phases to minimize the loss and to keep it to manageable levels. As new accelerators become ever more powerful, beam loss becomes even more critical. Linacs for H- ion beams, such as the one at the Oak Ridge Spallation Neutron Source, have many more loss mechanisms compared to H+ (proton) linacs, such as the one being designed for the European Spallation Neutron Source. Interesting H- beam loss mechanisms include residual gas stripping, H+ capture and acceleration, fie…
