Development of the orbit correction procedure and simulations on rf-noise driven slow resonant extraction of MedAustron synchrotron

Abstract

MedAustron is a synchrotron-based hadron therapy and research center in Austria currently in the commissioning phase. The accelerator is capable of delivering protons up to an energy of 60 - 800 MeV and carbon ions to 120 - 400 MeV per nucleon. This thesis consists of two parts focusing on two distinct topics of beam optics and beam dynamics. The aim of the first topic was to study the orbit correction procedure of the synchrotron. Commonly dedicated programs like MAD-X perform this computation and the results can be applied directly. However, first tests showed that this program cannot be used in the case of the off-momentum operated MedAustron synchrotron. Therefore a procedure pre-processing the input data in a way that standard orbit correction algorithms implemented in MAD-X can be used was developed. This procedure then was validated and verified successfully. The second topic of this thesis focuses on an alternative slow third order extraction driving mechanism using longitudinal RF-noise. For this purpose a dedicated single particle tracking code as well as analysis tools were programmed. In this study the extraction method using one frequency band only was used to investigate the feasibility of the method and to find appropriate settings and parameters. However, the results show that, within the investigated parameter range no setup could be found delivering the smooth extraction flux required for medical therapy. Results of this study have been presented at the 4th International Particle Accelerator Conference in May 2013.