Beam halo studies in LEHIPA DTL

Abstract

The Low Energy High Intensity Proton Accelerator (LEHIPA) project at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) consists of a 20 MeV, 30 mA proton linac. The accelerator comprises of a 3 MeV Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) and a 20 MeV Drift Tube Linac (DTL). In such high intensity accelerators, beam halos are of concern as they not only cause an increase in emittance, but also lead to beam loss and radio activation. We have studied the effect of beam mismatch at the DTL input on halo formation and propagation. The particle core model is used to excite the three envelope eigen modes; the quadrupole mode, the fast mode and the slow mode by giving input beam mismatch. These modes get damped as the beam progresses through the DTL. The damping mechanism is clearly Landau damping and leads to increase in rms emittance of the beam. The evolution of these modes and the corresponding increase in beam emittance and maximum beam extent, as the beam propagates through the DTL, has been studied for different space charge tunes. The halo parameter based on the definition of Allen and Wangler has been calculated. It is seen that beam halos are very important for LEHIPA DTL, even at 20 MeV and leads to emittance and beam size increase and also to beam loss in some cases. The longitudinal halo is present even without mismatch and transverse halos arise in the presence of beam mismatch.

Analyzing the effects of post couplers in DTL tuning by the equivalent circuit model

“…Both symmetrical and asymmetrical PCs can make the field stable. During the stabilization state, field distribution is flat when using symmetrical PCs, but we can get a tilted field distribution with asymmetrical ones and the rate of slope can be changed by rotating the PCs [6]. Fig.…”