The experience gained at CERN by the R&D for LINAC4 has been exported to medical and societal applications. With an innovative design of the Radio Frequecy Quadrupole (RFQ) at high frequencies, it is possible to build very com- pact structures, reproducible in industry and with the po- tential of full portability. ELISA (Experimental LInac for Surface Analysis) is a linear proton accelerator installed in the Science Gateway exhibition at CERN since October 2023. With a footprint of only 2×1 square meters, ELISA consists of an ion source, a one-meter-long RFQ working at 750 MHz and an analysing line dedicated to Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE). The system can accelerate a proton beam (extracted from the source at 20 keV) up to an energy of 2 MeV. In this paper the ELISA source commissioning is presented, with a multi-parameter optimization performed both computationally and experimentally and the ultimate optimization of beam emittance at 20 keV, finally achieving the required brilliance of the source. High energy beam com- missioning will also be discussed, including RFQ voltage scan to study the transmission and characterize the ELISA RFQ.

The CERN Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB) was upgraded within the LHC Injectors Upgrade (LIU) project and delivers a large variety of high-intensity beams for fixed target experiments and high-brightness beams for collisions at the LHC. In the context of the Physics Beyond Colliders (PBC) study and of a possible upgrade of the ISOLDE experimental area, intensities up to 1500×1e+10 particles per ring are considered. High-intensity tests have thus been performed during machine development studies in 2023 injecting the nominal or higher beam current from Linac4. In this contribution, the intensity reach and the main performance limitations for the production of high-intensity beams in the PSB are presented. The results are compared to numerical simulations.

The experience gained at CERN by the R&D for LINAC4 has been exported to medical and societal applications. With an innovative design of the Radio Frequecy Quadrupole (RFQ) at high frequencies, it is possible to build very com- pact structures, reproducible in industry and with the po- tential of full portability. ELISA (Experimental LInac for Surface Analysis) is a linear proton accelerator installed in the Science Gateway exhibition at CERN since October 2023. With a footprint of only 2×1 square meters, ELISA consists of an ion source, a one-meter-long RFQ working at 750 MHz and an analysing line dedicated to Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE). The system can accelerate a proton beam (extracted from the source at 20 keV) up to an energy of 2 MeV. In this paper the ELISA source commissioning is presented, with a multi-parameter optimization performed both computationally and experimentally and the ultimate optimization of beam emittance at 20 keV, finally achieving the required brilliance of the source. High energy beam com- missioning will also be discussed, including RFQ voltage scan to study the transmission and characterize the ELISA RFQ.