Performance of a compact injector for heavy-ion medical accelerators

A compact injector, designed for a heavy-ion medical accelerator complex, was constructed. It consists of an Electron-Cyclotron-Resonance Ion-Source (ECRIS) and two linacs, which are a Radio-Frequency-Quadrupole linac and an Interdigital H-mode Drift-Tube-Linac (IH-DTL) having the same operating frequency of 200 MHz. For beam focusing of the IH-DTL, the method of Alternating-Phase-Focusing (APF) was employed. The compact injector can accelerate heavy ions having a charge-to-mass ratio of qm=13 up to 4.0MeV/u. Use of the APF IH-DTL and operating frequency of 200 MHz allowed us to design compact linacs; the total length of the two linacs is less than 6 m. Beam-acceleration tests of the compact injector system were performed. The measured intensity of accelerated C4+12 beams with the compact injector was 380eμA. Beam transmission of the APF IH-DTL was estimated to be as high as 96%, which is comparable to the value calculated by a simulation code. Transverse phase-space and energy distributions of accelerated beams were measured and compared with those calculated by the simulation code, and we found that they were agreed well with each other.