At BARC, development of a Low Energy High Intensity Proton Accelerator (LEHIPA), as front-end injector of the 1 GeV accelerator for the ADS programme, has been initiated. The major components of LEHIPA (20 MeV, 30 mA) are a 50 keV ECR ion source, a 3 MeV Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) and a 20 MeV drift tube linac (DTL). The Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) and Medium Energy Beam Transport (MEBT) lines match the beam from the ion source to RFQ and from RFQ to DTL respectively. Design of these systems has been completed and fabrication of their prototypes has started. Physics studies of the 20-1000 MeV part of the Linac are also in progress. In this paper, the present status of this project is presented.

A 20 MeV, 30 mA CW proton linac is being developed at BARC, Mumbai. This linac will consist of an ECR ion source followed by a Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) and Drift tube Linac (DTL). The low energy beam transport (LEBT) line is used to match the beam from the ion source to the RFQ with minimum beam loss and increase in emittance. The LEBT is also used to eliminate the unwanted ions like H + 2 and H + 3 from entering the RFQ. In addition, space charge compensation is required for transportation of such high beam currents. All this requires careful design and optimization. Detailed beam dynamics simulations have been done to optimize the design of the LEBT using the Particle-in-cell code TRACEWIN. We find that with careful optimization it is possible to transport a 30 mA CW proton beam through the LEBT with 100% transmission and minimal emittance blow up, while at the same time suppressing unwanted species H + 2 and H + 3 to less than 3.3% of the total beam current.

A 3 MeV, 30 mA radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) accelerator has been designed for the low-energy high-intensity proton accelerator (LEHIPA) project at BARC, India. The beam and cavity dynamics studies were performed using the computer codes LIDOS, TOUTATIS, SUPERFISH and CST microwave studio. We have followed the conventional design technique with slight modifications and compared that with the equipartitioned (EP) type of design. The sensitivity of the RFQ to the variation of input beam Twiss-Courant parameters and emittance has also been studied. In this article we discuss both design strategies and the details of the 3D cavity simulation studies.

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We have performed detailed electromagnetic and beam dynamics studies of a 352.21 MHz drift-tube linac (DTL) that will accelerate a 30 mA CW proton beam from 3 to 20 MeV. At such high currents space charge effects are important, and therefore the effect of linear as well as non-linear space charge has been studied (corresponding to uniform and Gaussian initial beam distributions), in order to avoid space charge instabilities. To validate the electromagnetic simulations, a 1.2 m long prototype of the DTL was fabricated. RF measurements performed on the prototype were in good agreement with the simulations. A detailed simulation study of beam halos was also performed, which showed that beyond a current of 10 mA, significant longitudinal beam halos are excited even for a perfectly matched beam, whereas for a mis-matched beam transverse beam halos are also excited. However, these do not lead to any beam loss within the DTL.