ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
The Spallation Neutron Source accelerator systems will deliver a 1.0 GeV, 1.4 MW proton beam to a liquid mercury target for neutron scattering research. The accelerator complex consists of an H- injector, capable of producing one-ms-long pulses at 60 Hz repetition rate with 38 mA peak current, a 1 GeV linear accelerator, an accumulator ring and associated transport lines. The 2.5 MeV beam from the Front End is accelerated to 86 MeV in the Drift Tube Linac, then to 185 MeV in a Coupled-Cavity Linac and finally to 1 GeV in the Superconducting Linac. With the completion of beam commissioning, the accelerator complex began operation in June 2006 and beam power is being gradually ramped up toward the design goal. Operational experience with the injector and linac will be presented including chopper performance, transverse emittance evolution along the linac, and the results of a beam loss study.
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
A simulation code has been developed for the study of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) ring RF control. The code uses the time-domain solvers to compute beam-cavity interactions, and FFT methods to simulate time responses of the linear RF system. The important ingredients of the system are considered in the simulation model, which include the beam loading, dynamic cavity detuning, circuit bandwidth, loop delay, proportional-integral (P-I) controller for feedback and adaptive feed forward, stochastic noise, with-in-turn RF parameter change, beam current fluctuation and beam bunch leakage, etc. The beam loss in the accumulation ring goes up as the beam power increases, and thus a precise control of bunching voltage phase and amplitude is required to limit beam loss. This simulation tool will help the development a correct RF control and to achieve the goal of minimizing the beam loss.
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
The Accelerator Physics group at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) has developed numerous codes to assist in the beam commissioning, tuning, and operation of the SNS Linac. These codes have been key to meeting the beam commissioning milestones. For example, a recently developed code provides for rapid retuning of the superconducting Linac in case of RF stations going offline or coming online. Highlights of these "physics applications" will be presented.
