ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
The Spallation Neutron Source is designed to produce 1.4 MW of beam power on a mercury target produced in short (1 μSec) pulses at 60 Hz with a 1 GeV beam. Since the initial beam operations in Oct. 2006, the Spallation Neutron Source has operated production runs with beam power up to 520 kW. Apart from equipment issues, the primary challenge in power ramp up is beam loss. Suspected causes of observed beam loss will be discussed. While not contributing to beam loss at present operational parameters, evidence of collective effects is seen at higher intensities, and will be presented. Other issues of interest at high intensity include foil survivability, and maintaining acceptable power density on the neutron production target
JAEA/J-PARC, Tokai-Mura, Naka-Gun, Ibaraki-Ken
The Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) consists of Linac, 3-GeV rapid cycling synchrotron (RCS) and 50-GeV main ring synchrotron (MR). The J-PARC has been beam-commissioned since November 2006. The Linac and RCS have recently completed initial tunings of the basic parameters, and are now in transition from commissioning to operation and also to the challenging phase for aiming at the higher current operation. The MR also has recently started initial tunings in the storage mode. In this talk, the current status of the J-PARC beam commissioning will be outlined together with experimental data obtained in the actual beam tuning procedures.
CERN, Geneva
With LHC coming into operation very soon an upgrade plan for the whole CERN accelerator complex has been proposed to allow full exploitation of the LHC potential in the future as well as giving increased support to traditional and possible new experiments at lower beam energies. This plan foresees replacing during the period 2011 - 2017 all the accelerators in the LHC injector chain (Linac2, Booster, PS) by new machines (Linac4, SPL and PS2) except for the last - the SPS. In this scenario the SPS should be able to reliably accelerate twice higher beam intensity than achieved so far and therefore significant improvements to the machine performance, in addition to the increased injection energy due to PS2, should be found and implemented at the same time scale. The present status of proposals and ongoing studies for all accelerator injector chain is described with main emphasis on the SPS challenges and upgrade plans.
GSI, Darmstadt
The FAIR accelerator project at GSI should increase the intensity of primary proton and heavy ion beams by up to two orders of magnitude, relative to the existing GSI facility. In addition to the design of the new synchrotrons and storage rings, the intensity upgrade of the existing UNILAC linac and SIS-18 synchrotron plays a key role for the FAIR project. In order to reach the FAIR design beam parameters several challenges related to operation with high brightness, high current beams in SIS-18 and in the new SIS-100 have to mastered. Important issues are
- the minimization of beam loss caused by space charge induced resonance crossing and the identification of appropriate working points.
- The control of coherent beam instabilities in the presence of space charge, image currents and different ring impedance sources.
- Beam quality conservation during the rf cycle.
- The control of dynamic vacuum pressure during operation with medium charge state heavy ions.
Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois
Project X is a concept for an intense 8 GeV proton source that provides beam for the Fermilab Main Injector and an 8 GeV physics program. The source consists of an 8 GeV superconducting linac that injects into the Fermilab Recycler where multiple linac beam pulses are stripped and accumulated. The 8 GeV linac consists of a low energy front end possibly based on superconducting technology and a high energy end composed of ILC-like cryomodules.
Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois
Cooling of hadron beams is often the only technique by which accelerator facilities around the world achieve the necessary beam brightness necessary for their physics research. In this paper, we will give an overview of the latest developments in hadron beam cooling, for which high energy electron cooling at Fermilab’s Recycler ring and bunched beam stochastic cooling at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s RHIC facility represent two recent major accomplishments. Novel ideas in the field will also be introduced.