HGRF-IFIC · Commissioning, first tests and upgrade of a high-power S-Band Radio Frequency (RF) system for R+D of high-gradient normal-conducting accelerating cavities in breakdown science and RF conditioning
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-05-19 → 2019-05-18
- EU contribution
- €170,122
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Commissioning, first tests and upgrade of a high-power S-Band Radio Frequency (RF) system for R+D of high-gradient normal-conducting accelerating cavities in breakdown science and RF conditioning
General interest has been shown over the last years for compact and more affordable facilities for hadron-therapy. The High-Gradient (HG) know-how and technology for normal-conducting accelerating RF (Radio-Frequency) electron linac (linear accelerator) structures recently developed for projects such as CLIC (CERN), has raised the achievable accelerating gradient from 20-30 MV/m up to 100-120 MV/m. This gain has come through a better understanding of the high-power RF vacuum arcs or breakdowns (BD) phenomena, the development of quantitative HG RF design methods and refinements in fabrication techniques. This can allow for more compact linacs also for protons, which is potentially important in the new trend in hadron-therapy of using linacs able to provide protons of 70-230 MeV or light ions of 100-400 MeV/u. Linacs are of particular interest for medical applications because they can provide a high degree of flexibility for treatment, such as running at 100-400 Hz pulse rate and pulse-to-pulse beam energy (and intensity) variations. This kind of accelerator is very well suited to treat moving organs with 4D multi-painting spot scanning technique. Project studies like TULIP are taking advantage of these developments and pursuing medical linacs of reduced size. HG operation, which is carried out under ultra-high vacuum conditions (~10^-9 mbar), is limited by the BD phenomena and is characterized by the BD-Rate (BDR) or number of BD per pulse and meter. New fresh structures initially operate at a reduced performance and must be conditioned through extended high-power RF operation until the maximum operational gradient is reached. This process is a time consuming, and consequently costly task (> 35x10^6 pulses) which is important to understand and reduce. In order to delve into the issues related to this HG phenomena and with the aim of performing high-rate and systematical studies of HG accelerating structures, a HG RF laboratory has been constructed at the IFIC premises (Instituto de Fisica Corpuscular). The IFIC HG-RF laboratory is designed to host a high-power and high-repetition rate facility for testing S-Band (2.9985 GHz) normal-conducting RF structures. The main objective of this project is the commissioning of the laboratory and obtaining the first results of HG accelerating structures designed for proton-therapy applications.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
New Radio Frequency (RF) High-Gradient (HG) knowledge and technology in normal conducting accelerator structures has been developed by the accelerator Physics community in the recent years in X-Band frequency. Significant progress has been made to understand the RF high-gradient behavior, breakdown phenomena and cavities conditioning processes, but extensive R&D is still needed in this very interdisciplinary and phenomenology research area. This project proposes the commissioning and upgrade of a novel high-power RF system in S-Band to perform systematic breakdown studies and conditioning of cavities in this frequency range, in particular interesting for medical applications. The main challenge is the implementation of a hard real-time control of amplitude and phase at microsecond scale of the pulsed megawatt RF power delivered to the structures under test. The power delivery has to be done under stringent controlled and automated conditions in order to perform the conditioning and avoid permanent damage to the structures. In addition, a power boost upgrade of the system is envisaged to reach the power limits that medical high-gradient structures need to be pushed to. A close relation with industry partners is to be carried out in order to commission the new solid-state power modulator and test structures. The outcome of this R&D project can be crucial to make more compact linear accelerators, resulting in lower cost and size, which can have a potential impact in several applications: hadrontherapy facilities based on linear accelerators, which will be emphasized in this project due to its advantageous features; industrial applications such as cargo scanning; or scientific applications such as free-electron-lasers and Compton sources.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITAT DE VALENCIA · ValenciaCoordinatorSpain
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union