Experimental verification of an APF linac for a proton therapy facility

Alternating phase focusing (APF) is known as a beam focusing method; it was applied to an interdigital H-mode structure and successfully accelerated high current proton beams up to the desired energy for a medical synchrotron injector. A high-current APF linac was achieved by the optimal design of the cavity and the drift tubes themselves, as well as drift tube arrangement based on the co-iteration of a precise electromagnetic field and space charge beam dynamics.A proton injector for a medical accelerator complex was fabricated with the newly developed APF linac. The injector consists of an electron cyclotron resonance ion source, a radio-frequency quadrupole linac and the APF linac. The experimental results showed that over 10 mA proton beams were accelerated up to 7.4 MeV.