5th Slow Extraction Workshop at MedAustron in Wiener Neustadt

MedAustron is a synchrotron based particle therapy facility located in Wiener Neustadt, Austria.

It comprises of 4 irradiation rooms, 3 of which are dedicated to medical treatment using protons (62.4 and 252.7 MeV) and carbon ions (120 and 402.8 MeV/u) delivered via 3 fixed beam lines (2 horizontal and 1 vertical) and 1 Gantry (protons only). It is the only facility world-wide that uses a...

CNAO is one of the four centres in Europe, and six worldwide, offering treatments of tumours with both protons and carbon ions. By the end of 2023 more than 4800 patients were treated at CNAO.
The CNAO synchrotron provides carbon ion beams with energies up to 400 MeV/u and protons up to 227 MeV in 3 treatment rooms and one experimental room open also to external users. The beam distribution...

Heidelberg ion beam therapy centre (HIT) was the first dedicated ion beam therapy facility in Europe.
Since 2009 more than 8000 patients have been treated with carbon ions, protons and, more recently, also with helium ions.

Several compact application facilities have been designed and developed for space science study and cancer therapy by IMP (Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) based on technical developments and plentiful experiences from HIRFL-CSR and HIAF. For the complicated space environment simulation and related science research, the SESRI (Space Environment Simulation and Research...

The Next Ion Medical Machine Study (NIMMS) is an international collaboration initiative, established in 2018 and based at CERN, with the goal of developing new technologies for the future generation of accelerators for cancer therapy with ions. It has four work packages: superconducting magnets, gantries, compact synchrotrons and high-frequency linacs.
This contribution focuses on medical...

Heavy-ion single event effect (SEE) test facilities are critical in the development of microelectronic components that will be exposed to the ionizing particles present in the hostile environment of space. CHARM High-energy Ions for Micro Electronics Reliability Assurance (CHIMERA) and HEARTS have developed a high-energy ion beam capable of scanning a wide range of Linear Energy Transfer (LET)...

In the framework of the Physics Beyond Colliders Study Group, recent efforts have demonstrated the feasibility of increasing, by over an order of magnitude, the intensity of the 400 GeV proton beam delivered to the underground Experimental Cavern North 3 (ECN3) of CERN’s North Area. At the June 2023 CERN Council, an ambitious study project was approved to deliver a Technical Design Report...

The GSI facility for research with heavy ions provides experiments with slow
extracted beams from the synchrotron SIS18 since the early 1990s. Presently, the
new FAIR facility is under construction next to the GSI site. FAIR will allow
experiments to continue and extend their heavy ion research programs by
providing beams of higher energies and higher intensities with slow extraction
from...

The Slow Extraction Survey was conducted in 2021 as part of the iFAST-REX collaboration and extended to a broader audience at the Slow Extraction Workshop in 2022. Eleven facilities from around the world participated in the parameter collection. The survey aimed to establish the current state of slow extraction in all facilities and use this as a baseline for future collaborations and...

There are 7 carbon synchrotron and 12 proton synchrotron in operation for particle therapy in Japan. Advanced slow extraction technique has been developed for raster scanning irradiation for carbon ion therapy in HIMAC and other facilities such as double RF knock-out method for ripple reduction and multiple-energy operation using extended flattop. This technique have enabled the scanning...

Single Event Effects (SEE) testing is a critical part of developing technologies for the interplanetary space environment. The proposed BNL High Energy Effects Test (HEET) facility that we would build off the AGS, is being designed for the needs of the SEE testing community. This short report will discuss the proposed design, from the slow extraction to a new beamline, and the capabilities of...

Mu2e experiment, searching for a super rare mode of the CLFV decay of muon into an electron is in preparation for data taking at Fermilab’s Muon Campus facility. The experiment requires the 8 GeV proton beam continuous delivery aided by the Slow Extraction (SX) from the Delivery Ring. The first beam commissioning of the SX has been scheduled for FY2024. However, there was a possibility to...

J-PARC Main Ring(MR) accelerates the proton beam from 3 GeV to 30 GeV and delivers the beam to the Hadron Experimental Facility(HEF) through slow extraction using third-order resonance. At the HEF various particle and nuclear physics experiments are conducted mainly using kaon beams generated on secondary particle production targets and also primary proton beams. From 2021 to 2023, the J-PARC...

High Intensity Heavy-ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) is a giant accelerator facility aiming at high intensity primary and secondary beam preparation which is under construction in China. To achieve the challenging intensity goal, high intensity beam preparation remains a top priority of dynamics research. The first issue is how to accumulate in BRing with High injection gain(>56) and low beam...

Xsuite is a modular simulation package bringing to a single flexible and modern framework capabilities of different tools developed at CERN in the past decades, notably MAD-X, Sixtrack, Sixtracklib, COMBI and PyHEADTAIL. The suite consists of a set of Python modules (Xobjects, Xpart, Xtrack, Xcoll, Xfields, Xdeps) that can be flexibly combined together and with other accelerator- specific and...

The intensity ripples in the extracted beam are a crucial topic for clinical treatment, as a constant particle flux is required for optimal operation of the accelerator within safety regulations. Therefore, ripple mitigation techniques are widely used in facilities worldwide.
This talk discusses the intensity ripples at MedAustron by analysing the ripple frequency spectrum and the impact of...

Results of two topics are presented in this contribution.
The first one is the influence of some quantities on the spill quality of the KO extraction from the future GSI heavy ion synchrotron SIS100 studied with particle tracking simulations. This technique is still foreseen as standard slow extraction technique in SIS100. The results suggest that for such conditions the presently applied...

In this contribution, we will discuss the beam dynamics relevant for the KO extracted spill feedback loop by means of Xsuite simulations and measurements at GSI SIS-18. The fundamental limitations of this feedback scheme under typical machine settings and excitation waveforms will be highlighted.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation...

The beam response to an external periodic excitation delivers relevant information about the ion-beam optics, tune distribution and stability of a circulating beam in a storage ring. In this contribution the horizontal beam response under conditions typical for slow extraction is presented for a coasting beam. The resulting spectrum exhibits a splitting behaviour. The single particle dynamics...

The Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Centre HIT uses the RF-KO slow extraction method to extract the particles from the synchrotron. To improve the spill quality of the extracted beam a new RF-signal was investigated which increases the R-value from 92.5% to 97.5%. The signal is a multiband RF signal broadened with a random BPSK at 3 frequency bands. The new KO-DDS which generates the signal is in...

In this talk, we investigate the transit time of particles in a third-integer resonant extraction process. Transit time is defined as the number of turns a particle takes to get extracted once it is in the unstable region, i.e., outside the triangular separatrix. The study of transit time is important because transit time determines the beam response time during resonant extraction and thus...

The main magnet power supplies for the J-PARC Main Ring were upgraded from 2021 to 2023. In addition to increasing the maximum voltage output to shorten the acceleration time from 3GeV to 30GeV, reducing the current ripples for improving the beam spill structure was also one of the major objectives of the power supply upgrade. Although good results were obtained in current ripple measurements...

Inevitably, to evaluate the quality of the slow extracted beams delivered to experiments, we need to understand how different frequency components develop. How we evaluate this is to look at the beam spills in a beamline. However, while those are the end result and what the experiments see, they don’t directly represent how the different frequencies get imprinted into the spill. This is what...

Spill uniformity is a key performance metric for the experimental users in the CERN North Area, who receive slow-extracted protons from the Super Proton Synchrotron. In this contribution, RF empty-bucket techniques are studied to suppress the low-frequency variations in the spill caused by power-converter ripple. The study includes simulation, measurement and the long-term experience after...

Multiple energy extraction can deliver multiple energy flattops per accelerator cycle, improving treatment efficiency. In this process, the extraction efficiency of each flattop and the beam loss during non-extraction times are the key parameters. Such beam loss is mainly composed of the spill intensity overshoot, which reduces the number of particles available for treatment and thereby lowers...

The temporary quality of the slowly extracted beams from a synchrotron on the 100 microseconds time scale is crucial for fixed-target experiments and hadron therapy. The spill micro structure is caused by power supply ripples that act on the ring quadrupoles. To reveal the beam dynamics of the slowly extracted beams, the transit time is investigated theoretically and experimentally. It is a...

Experiments and simulations regarding the micro spill structure of slowly extracted bunched beams have been performed at GSI for years. In SIS18 the bunch spacing was limited to a minimum of 185 us due to the operating frequency range of the installed cavities and LLRF. To overcome this limit, which is not suitable for many detectors, a new cavity system was developed.
The cavity was...

The Mechanical and Materials Engineering group of the Engineering Department at CERN has gained in the last decade important experience in the comprehensive characterization of low Z materials, offering valuable insights into their properties and field of application. We focus on elucidating the unique challenges associated with low Z materials, encompassing their processing, welding...

The CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) plays a crucial role in the CERN Fixed Target (FT) physics program by extracting proton beams towards the North Area (NA) targets. In order to gradually deliver the proton beams to the three primary NA targets, slow extraction is performed by approaching the third order resonance in the SPS, and the spill is eventually split on two vertical splitters...

A poster describing the limitations of extraction from a compact scaling fixed field accelerator. The LhARA Stage 2 FFA is used as the optics baseline, based on the RACCAM study. RF-KO is applied as the main extraction method.
Poster first presented at IPAC 2023 by A. Steinberg, with results published in IOP conference proceedings.

Mitigating the micro-structure of the spill can be achieved by adjusting the machine settings or manipulating the beam properties. At SIS18, spill smoothing was commissioned by changing the longitudinal distribution of the circulating beam with RF cavities. Tune scan slow extraction was performed using two different frequencies for the RF cavities: bunching was performed at roughly 4.85 MHz (4...

Within the EU-funded activity IFAST, the task REX (Resonance Extraction Improvement) was launched in 2021 as WP 5.3. The IFAST-REX consortium comprises European hadron synchrotron facilities CERN and GSI, the hadron therapy centres CNAO, HIT, MedAustron, MIT and SEEIIST, as well as the companies Barthel HF-Technik and Bergoz Instrumentation. It deals with the crucial challenge of slow...

The High energy FRagment Separator (HFRS), a new generation in-flight radioactive separator in the intensity Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF), is under construction in China. It is characterized by large ion-optical acceptance, high resolution power, high magnetic rigidity, and excellent particle identification. In combination with the HIAF accelerator facility, which will provide...

The HIAF project is a new international advanced accelerator in China, which needs a new type of high power, high precision, fast-cycling pulse power supplies to provide excitation current for the magnets of its B-Ring system.

Monitoring the extraction of protons from the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) ring to the North Area (NA) facility at a high rate is crucial for optimizing the extraction process and ensuring efficient fixed target physics. To achieve this, it is necessary to measure beam current fluctuations across a wide range of frequencies, from a few hundred Hz to several hundred MHz. This...

The secondary emission beam monitors of the North Area at CERN (BSIs) form a vital component in the delivery of stable beams to experiments and users. Located in the primary beam lines, these monitors operate by integrating low-energy secondary electrons emitted proportionally to the charged particle flux. In turn, the absolute calibration of these monitors plays a key role in their operation....

The Cryogenic Current Comparator (CCC) is a SQUID based superconducting device for intensity measurement, which has first been proposed as a beam diagnostics in the mid 90s at GSI. In the course of plannings for FAIR the CCC has been revitalized as intensity monitor for exotic/highly charged ions and antiprotons in the storage rings as well as for slow extracted beams in the extraction and...

The J-PARC Hadron beamline is a slow-extraction beamline with three primary beamlines. The A line (30 GeV, 65 kW, spill length of 2 seconds, cycle of 5.2 seconds) serves as a beamline for experiments utilizing secondary particles generated at the T1 target. The B-line (30 GeV, 24 W, spill length of 2 seconds, cycle of 5.2 seconds) branches out part of A-line beam, directly employing protons...

J-PARC Main Ring currently delivers 30 GeV, 65 kW (7 × 1013 ppp) slow-extracted proton beams over 2 s to the hadron experimental facility to drive various nuclear and particle physics experiments. A high-intensity beam triggered by risky machine trips could cause serious damage to an electric septum or a production target. The Hadron Hall incident that occurred in 2013 was the most serious in...

2020 MedAustron and Instrumentation Technologies started to develop a new RF instrument, capable of handling all RF use-cases in the injector or the synchrotron at MedAustron. This development is now mostly finished and the device is ready for commissioning. The system can be used as digitizer or beam diagnostic device, but it can also generate arbitrary RF signals. Combining RF readout and...

This presentation describes some of the beam losses and instabilities observed in the MedAustron synchrotron during operation that could potentially affect the efficiency of RFKO slow extraction. The slow extraction process at MedAustron is driven by a Betatron core for clinical operation, and the RFKO method is being studied experimentally in view of a future machine improvement. This study...

The NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) uses beams of various ions species slowly extracted from Booster synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Experimenters at NSRL require uniformly distributed radiation dose to simulate the space radiation environment. The NSRL facility generates uniform beam distribution of various ion species at the location of the target using a pair of...

The SESRI facility, known as the Space Environment Simulation and Research Infrastructure, was successfully completed in Harbin, China, in 2022. It stands as a comprehensive ion species facility exclusively dedicated to space environment simulation and associated scientific research.
During the design and construction phases of SESRI, two major challenges were encountered. To effectively...

The synchrotron SIS100 has been optimized for operation with the partially
stripped ion U28+, resulting in a number of unique challenges: transverse
emittances are comparatively large; the beam has high damage potential due to
the high dE/dx; the lattice must provide efficient collimation of ions losing
electrons in collisions with residual gas to prevent vacuum instabilities.
Resulting...

Modern low emittance lattices typically require a reduced cell length and high quadrupole gradients, thereby generating large natural chromaticities. Thanks to the low dispersion requirement the chromaticity correction requires strong sextupoles, which accentuate the role of the non-linear dynamics in the machine. We present the design considerations of a resonant slow extraction based on the...

The current beam power for the user operation in J-PARC MR's slow extraction beam is 64 kW. After the beam operation at this beam intensity, the on-contact residual radiation dose rate with a cooling time of 6.5 h exceeded 10 mSv/h around the ESS. To further increase the beam intensity while keeping the maintainability of the devices, further reduction of the beam loss is essential. Thus we...

Mu2e experiment, searching for a super rare mode of the CLFV decay of muon into an electron is in preparation for data taking at Fermilab’s Muon Campus facility. The experiment requires the 8 GeV proton beam continuous delivery aided by the Slow Extraction (SX) from the Delivery Ring. The first beam commissioning of the SX has been scheduled for FY2024. However, there was a possibility to...

Slow extraction is an unavoidably lossy process. Primary particles are deemed to intercept the electrostatic septum wires while separating the extracted from the circulating beam. Over the last years, a technique to reduce septum losses has been proposed at CERN for the SPS: shadowing of electrostatic septum via Silicon bent crystals. Very promising results both in dedicated measurements...

Uncontrolled beam loss at the electrostatic septum is a performance limit for hadron accelerators delivering slow-extracted beam to fixed-target experiments. The application of numerical optimizers has been shown to reduce such beam loss. The efficiency depends on the parameters to optimize, the details of the extraction process and the used hardware. In this presentation, the minimization of...

The synchrotrons SIS18 and SIS100 at GSI/FAIR uses resonant extraction for slow beam extraction. The electrostatic extraction septa (ES) utilizes thin wire arrays as anode, which are sensitive to beam loss, especially at low beam energies and for heavy ions, where the energy loss dE/dx is high. Beam loss can lead to high temperatures, where the anode wires break due to reduced mechanical...

Electrostatic septa are critical components in particle accelerators, but operating them can be challenging. Optimizing their settings is key to enhancing beam quality and reducing losses. Recent techniques at CERN focus on minimizing setup time and monitoring spark rates to prevent equipment damage. This talk will share experiences and advancements from CERN, offering valuable insights into...

The impact of high-flux protons on the inherent beam loss in the slow extraction from SPS towards the North Area has been recently discussed and potential improvements have been proposed. These solutions are mainly aiming to reduce the high component activation and related reduction of lifetime, as well as observed non straightness in the anode body. Recent studies have allowed to demonstrate...

Mu2e experiment requires 8 GeV proton beam to study rare neutrinoless decays of a muon to an electron. The delivery of 8 spills every 1.4 seconds with 1E12 protons per spill is provided by means of resonant slow extraction. Two electrostatic septa (ESS) have been designed to facilitate the slow extraction. Each septum will have a cathode that is energized to a nominal voltage of 100kV with a...

In 2008, an electrostatic septum was built to a CERN design in industry for the slow extraction in CNAO’s medical accelerator in Pavia. Shortly after it’s installation, several shortcomings revealed themselves, such as limited orbiting beam acceptance and difficulties to operate the displacement system remotely.
In 2020 a collaboration was launched between CERN and CNAO to design a version of...

Accelerators for ion beam therapy are always based on synchrotrons if ions other than protons are used.
In order to be able to use the raster scanning method, the beam must be slowly extracted from the synchrotron.
This talk summarizes the most important current requirements for slow extraction at medical facilities.
Additionally we ask: What future topics are being discussed a lot in...

The need for greater flexibility, faster turnaround times, reduced energy consumption, reducing operational cost at maximum physics output and the sheer size of potential future accelerators such as the FCC ask for new particle accelerator operational models with automation at the center. AI/ML is already playing a significant role in the accelerator domain with numerous applications in...

The CERN Super Proton Synchrotron offers slow-extracted, high-intensity proton beams at 400 GeV/c for 3 fixed targets in the CERN North Area hall with a spill length of about 5 s. Various effects are detrimental to the spill quality due to the nature of slow extraction. Some of these spill deterioration sources have been successfully tackled in recent years and for others, projects are ongoing...

Protons impacting the electrostatic septum wires produce a significant activation of the septum and its surroundings. Such induced activation is the main limiting factor for the number of protons that can be delivered to the experiments and hence to the physics thruput of the CERN SPS. In this contribution, we present a data-driven model to predict the induced radioactivity around the...

A third-integer resonant slow extraction system is being developed for the Fermilab's Delivery Ring to deliver protons to the Mu2e experiment. During a slow extraction process, the beam on target is liable to experience small intensity variations due to many factors. Owing to the experiment's strict requirements in the quality of the spill, a Spill Regulation System (SRS) is currently under...

Slow resonant extraction plays a crucial role in delivering a high-quality continuous beam to experiments. Simulating extraction and transport of charged particle beams from a synchrotron to a transport line require a process of careful modeling and experimentation. There are various particle tracking simulation tools available to use and each has its merits and deficiencies. In this work we...

Slow extraction is needed for continuous particle spills from synchrotrons but is inherently lossy due to the non-zero particle density between circulating and extracted beam lines. At CERN's SPS, this results in significant activation of electrostatic septa, making it a highly radioactive area. The current SPS operational parameters and annual slow-extracted protons are already constrained by...

Bent crystals have become a well-established technology, utilized in diverse accelerator applications at CERN such as the crystal-assisted collimation system in the LHC and loss reduction during slow extraction from SPS using the shadowing technique. Future plans involve employing bent crystals as a key component to measure the electric and magnetic dipole momentum of short-lived particles in...

The SHERPA (“Slow High-efficiency Extraction from Ring Positron Accelerator”) project aim is to develop an efficient technique to extract a positron beam from one of the accelerator rings composing the DAΦNE accelerator complex at the Frascati National Laboratory of INFN, setting up a new beam line able to deliver positron spills of O(ms) length, excellent beam energy spread and...

In recent years, mixed helium (He-2+) and carbon ion (C-6+) irradiation schemes have been proposed to facilitate in-vivo range verification in ion beam therapy. Such a scheme implies accelerating and extracting both ion species simultaneously, with the idea of using C-6+ for tumor treatment, while performing real-time dosimetry with He-2+ in a detector downstream of the patient.

The...

The NIMMS Helium Synchrotron is a 30 m circumference ring which provides slow extracted protons and helium ions to a proposed treatment and research facility.
For a state-of-the-art research facility, flexible extraction options are essential. These options include having high intensity pulses, and variable timescale pulses to investigate radiobiological FLASH effects.
A variety of different...

Improved slow extraction beam stability can be achieved by better control of the magnet power supply currents. However, the required performance exceeds capabilities of available current measurement systems. Within the IFast collaboration, such an improved current measurement system is being developed. This presentation summarizes the requirements, the solution under development and achieved...

MedAustron is an ion therapy facility for protons and carbon ions located in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. The beam is presently extracted for clinical operation from the synchrotron with third-order resonant slow extraction via acceleration with a betatron core. However, due to the flexibility of the synchrotron operation for Non Clinical Research (NCR) purposes, other extraction methods can be...

This presentation provides an overview of the current simulation framework used at MedAustron to simulate the multi-energy extraction process. These simulations aim to assist in the commissioning of a potential future implementation of MEE at MedAustron. The recent improvements in the Xsuite tracking code facilitate the simulation of beam re-acceleration, including all the necessary dynamic...

The excitation signals used in Radio Frequency Knock Out (RF KO) resonant slow extraction influence the temporal structure of the resulting spill. Therefore, a careful design of excitation signals is crucial to prevent artificial ripples in the spill caused by the excitation. At the same time, tailored signals can suppress ripples introduced by external sources such as power converters.
This...

Radio-frequency (RF) techniques can be utilised to provide a tailored time structure to slow extraction users. In this contribution, a manipulation known as RF phase displacement is presented as a way of satisfying two different beam requests: (i) ~millisecond-scale spills for FLASH therapy/Radiation-to-Electronics users, and (ii) ~second-scale spills with nanosecond bunching for a dark-matter...

The synchrotrons SIS18 and SIS100 at GSI/FAIR uses resonant extraction for slow beam extraction. The electrostatic extraction septa (ES) utilizes thin wire arrays as anode, which are sensitive to beam loss, especially at low beam energies and for heavy ions, where the energy loss dE/dx is high. Beam loss can lead to high temperatures, where the anode wires break due to reduced mechanical...

The CERN Super Proton Synchrotron offers slow-extracted, high-intensity proton beams at 400 GeV/c for 3 fixed targets in the CERN North Area hall with a spill length of about 5 s. Various effects are detrimental to the spill quality due to the nature of slow extraction. Some of these spill deterioration sources have been successfully tackled in recent years and for others, projects are ongoing...

Experiments and simulations regarding the micro spill structure of slowly extracted bunched beams have been performed at GSI for years. In SIS18 the bunch spacing was limited to a minimum of 185 ns due to the operating frequency range of the installed cavities and LLRF. To overcome this limit, which is not suitable for many detectors, a new cavity system was developed.
The cavity was...

In the framework of the Physics Beyond Colliders Study Group, recent efforts have demonstrated the feasibility of increasing, by over an order of magnitude, the intensity of the 400 GeV proton beam delivered to the underground Experimental Cavern North 3 (ECN3) of CERN’s North Area. At the June 2023 CERN Council, an ambitious study project was approved to deliver a Technical Design Report...

Heavy-ion single event effect (SEE) test facilities are critical in the development of microelectronic components that will be exposed to the ionizing particles present in the hostile environment of space. CHARM High-energy Ions for Micro Electronics Reliability Assurance (CHIMERA) and HEARTS have developed a high-energy ion beam capable of scanning a wide range of Linear Energy Transfer (LET)...

The secondary emission beam monitors of the North Area at CERN (BSIs) form a vital component in the delivery of stable beams to experiments and users. Located in the primary beam lines, these monitors operate by integrating low-energy secondary electrons emitted proportionally to the charged particle flux. In turn, the absolute calibration of these monitors plays a key role in their operation....

The Mechanical and Materials Engineering group of the Engineering Department at CERN has gained in the last decade important experience in the comprehensive characterization of low Z materials, offering valuable insights into their properties and field of application. We focus on elucidating the unique challenges associated with low Z materials, encompassing their processing, welding...

Uncontrolled beam loss at the electrostatic septum is a performance limit for hadron accelerators delivering slow-extracted beam to fixed-target experiments. The application of numerical optimizers has been shown to reduce such beam loss. The efficiency depends on the parameters to optimize, the details of the extraction process and the used hardware. In this presentation, the minimization of...

The current beam power for the user operation in J-PARC MR's slow extraction beam is 64 kW. After the beam operation at this beam intensity, the on-contact residual radiation dose rate with a cooling time of 6.5 h exceeded 10 mSv/h around the ESS. To further increase the beam intensity while keeping the maintainability of the devices, further reduction of the beam loss is essential. Thus we...

This presentation describes some of the beam losses and instabilities observed in the MedAustron synchrotron during operation that could potentially affect the efficiency of RFKO slow extraction. The slow extraction process at MedAustron is driven by a Betatron core for clinical operation, and the RFKO method is being studied experimentally in view of a future machine improvement. This study...

The intensity ripples in the extracted beam are a crucial topic for clinical treatment, as a constant particle flux is required for optimal operation of the accelerator within safety regulations. Therefore, ripple mitigation techniques are widely used in facilities worldwide.
This talk discusses the intensity ripples at MedAustron by analysing the ripple frequency spectrum and the impact of...

The NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) uses beams of various ions species slowly extracted from Booster synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Experimenters at NSRL require uniformly distributed radiation dose to simulate the space radiation environment. The NSRL facility generates uniform beam distribution of various ion species at the location of the target using a pair of...

Slow resonant extraction plays a crucial role in delivering a high-quality continuous beam to experiments. Simulating extraction and transport of charged particle beams from a synchrotron to a transport line require a process of careful modeling and experimentation. There are various particle tracking simulation tools available to use and each has its merits and deficiencies. In this work we...

The SESRI facility, known as the Space Environment Simulation and Research Infrastructure, was successfully completed in Harbin, China, in 2022. It stands as a comprehensive ion species facility exclusively dedicated to space environment simulation and associated scientific research.
During the design and construction phases of SESRI, two major challenges were encountered. To effectively...

High Intensity Heavy-ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) is a giant accelerator facility aiming at high intensity primary and secondary beam preparation which is under construction in China. To achieve the challenging intensity goal, high intensity beam preparation remains a top priority of dynamics research. The first issue is how to accumulate in BRing with High injection gain(>56) and low beam...

CNAO is one of the four centres in Europe, and six worldwide, offering treatments of tumours with both protons and carbon ions. By the end of 2023 more than 4800 patients were treated at CNAO.
The CNAO synchrotron provides carbon ion beams with energies up to 400 MeV/u and protons up to 227 MeV in 3 treatment rooms and one experimental room open also to external users. The beam distribution...

In 2008, an electrostatic septum was built to a CERN design in industry for the slow extraction in CNAO’s medical accelerator in Pavia. Shortly after it’s installation, several shortcomings revealed themselves, such as limited orbiting beam acceptance and difficulties to operate the displacement system remotely.
In 2020 a collaboration was launched between CERN and CNAO to design a version of...

Several compact application facilities have been designed and developed for space science study and cancer therapy by IMP (Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) based on technical developments and plentiful experiences from HIRFL-CSR and HIAF. For the complicated space environment simulation and related science research, the SESRI (Space Environment Simulation and Research...

Slow extraction is an unavoidably lossy process. Primary particles are deemed to intercept the electrostatic septum wires while separating the extracted from the circulating beam. Over the last years, a technique to reduce septum losses has been proposed at CERN for the SPS: shadowing of electrostatic septum via Silicon bent crystals. Very promising results both in dedicated measurements...

The SHERPA (“Slow High-efficiency Extraction from Ring Positron Accelerator”) project aim is to develop an efficient technique to extract a positron beam from one of the accelerator rings composing the DAΦNE accelerator complex at the Frascati National Laboratory of INFN, setting up a new beam line able to deliver positron spills of O(ms) length, excellent beam energy spread and...

J-PARC Main Ring(MR) accelerates the proton beam from 3 GeV to 30 GeV and delivers the beam to the Hadron Experimental Facility(HEF) through slow extraction using third-order resonance. At the HEF various particle and nuclear physics experiments are conducted mainly using kaon beams generated on secondary particle production targets and also primary proton beams. From 2021 to 2023, the J-PARC...

Modern low emittance lattices typically require a reduced cell length and high quadrupole gradients, thereby generating large natural chromaticities. Thanks to the low dispersion requirement the chromaticity correction requires strong sextupoles, which accentuate the role of the non-linear dynamics in the machine. We present the design considerations of a resonant slow extraction based on the...

2020 MedAustron and Instrumentation Technologies started to develop a new RF instrument, capable of handling all RF use-cases in the injector or the synchrotron at MedAustron. This development is now mostly finished and the device is ready for commissioning. The system can be used as digitizer or beam diagnostic device, but it can also generate arbitrary RF signals. Combining RF readout and...

The impact of high-flux protons on the inherent beam loss in the slow extraction from SPS towards the North Area has been recently discussed and potential improvements have been proposed. These solutions are mainly aiming to reduce the high component activation and related reduction of lifetime, as well as observed non straightness in the anode body. Recent studies have allowed to demonstrate...

Mu2e experiment requires 8 GeV proton beam to study rare neutrinoless decays of a muon to an electron. The delivery of 8 spills every 1.4 seconds with 1E12 protons per spill is provided by means of resonant slow extraction. Two electrostatic septa (ESS) have been designed to facilitate the slow extraction. Each septum will have a cathode that is energized to a nominal voltage of 100kV with a...

Monitoring the extraction of protons from the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) ring to the North Area (NA) facility at a high rate is crucial for optimizing the extraction process and ensuring efficient fixed target physics. To achieve this, it is necessary to measure beam current fluctuations across a wide range of frequencies, from a few hundred Hz to several hundred MHz. This...

In the accelerator applications of slow extraction for High Energy Physics (HEP), one of the prime challenges is the mitigation of beam losses, which is becoming increasingly critical with the continuous rise in beam power. One of the very effective methods to mitigate proton beam losses in Slow Extraction is crystal channeling. After successful implementation of this method at CERN with...

Mu2e experiment, searching for a super rare mode of the CLFV decay of muon into an electron is in preparation for data taking at Fermilab’s Muon Campus facility. The experiment requires the 8 GeV proton beam continuous delivery aided by the Slow Extraction (SX) from the Delivery Ring. The first beam commissioning of the SX has been scheduled for FY2024. However, there was a possibility to...

The NIMMS Helium Synchrotron is a 30 m circumference ring which provides slow extracted protons and helium ions to a proposed treatment and research facility.
For a state-of-the-art research facility, flexible extraction options are essential. These options include having high intensity pulses, and variable timescale pulses to investigate radiobiological FLASH effects.
A variety of different...

The HIAF project is a new international advanced accelerator in China, which needs a new type of high power, high precision, fast-cycling pulse power supplies to provide excitation current for the magnets of its B-Ring system.

Heidelberg ion beam therapy centre (HIT) was the first dedicated ion beam therapy facility in Europe.
Since 2009 more than 8000 patients have been treated with carbon ions, protons and, more recently, also with helium ions.

The Slow Extraction Survey was conducted in 2021 as part of the iFAST-REX collaboration and extended to a broader audience at the Slow Extraction Workshop in 2022. Eleven facilities from around the world participated in the parameter collection. The survey aimed to establish the current state of slow extraction in all facilities and use this as a baseline for future collaborations and...

Within the EU-funded activity IFAST, the task REX (Resonance Extraction Improvement) was launched in 2021 as WP 5.3. The IFAST-REX consortium comprises European hadron synchrotron facilities CERN and GSI, the hadron therapy centres CNAO, HIT, MedAustron, MIT and SEEIIST, as well as the companies Barthel HF-Technik and Bergoz Instrumentation. It deals with the crucial challenge of slow...

Bent crystals have become a well-established technology, utilized in diverse accelerator applications at CERN such as the crystal-assisted collimation system in the LHC and loss reduction during slow extraction from SPS using the shadowing technique. Future plans involve employing bent crystals as a key component to measure the electric and magnetic dipole momentum of short-lived particles in...

Protons impacting the electrostatic septum wires produce a significant activation of the septum and its surroundings. Such induced activation is the main limiting factor for the number of protons that can be delivered to the experiments and hence to the physics thruput of the CERN SPS. In this contribution, we present a data-driven model to predict the induced radioactivity around the...

The need for greater flexibility, faster turnaround times, reduced energy consumption, reducing operational cost at maximum physics output and the sheer size of potential future accelerators such as the FCC ask for new particle accelerator operational models with automation at the center. AI/ML is already playing a significant role in the accelerator domain with numerous applications in...

The beam response to an external periodic excitation delivers relevant information about the ion-beam optics, tune distribution and stability of a circulating beam in a storage ring. In this contribution the horizontal beam response under conditions typical for slow extraction is presented for a coasting beam. The resulting spectrum exhibits a splitting behaviour. The single particle dynamics...

The temporary quality of the slowly extracted beams from a synchrotron on the 100 microseconds time scale is crucial for fixed-target experiments and hadron therapy. The spill micro structure is caused by power supply ripples that act on the ring quadrupoles. To reveal the beam dynamics of the slowly extracted beams, the transit time is investigated theoretically and experimentally. It is a...

The High energy FRagment Separator (HFRS), a new generation in-flight radioactive separator in the intensity Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF), is under construction in China. It is characterized by large ion-optical acceptance, high resolution power, high magnetic rigidity, and excellent particle identification. In combination with the HIAF accelerator facility, which will provide...

In this contribution, we will discuss the beam dynamics relevant for the KO extracted spill feedback loop by means of Xsuite simulations and measurements at GSI SIS-18. The fundamental limitations of this feedback scheme under typical machine settings and excitation waveforms will be highlighted.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation...

J-PARC Main Ring currently delivers 30 GeV, 65 kW (7 × 1013 ppp) slow-extracted proton beams over 2 s to the hadron experimental facility to drive various nuclear and particle physics experiments. A high-intensity beam triggered by risky machine trips could cause serious damage to an electric septum or a production target. The Hadron Hall incident that occurred in 2013 was the most serious in...

Improved slow extraction beam stability can be achieved by better control of the magnet power supply currents. However, the required performance exceeds capabilities of available current measurement systems. Within the IFast collaboration, such an improved current measurement system is being developed. This presentation summarizes the requirements, the solution under development and achieved...

MedAustron is a synchrotron based particle therapy facility located in Wiener Neustadt, Austria.

It comprises of 4 irradiation rooms, 3 of which are dedicated to medical treatment using protons (62.4 and 252.7 MeV) and carbon ions (120 and 402.8 MeV/u) delivered via 3 fixed beam lines (2 horizontal and 1 vertical) and 1 Gantry (protons only). It is the only facility world-wide that uses a...

There are 7 carbon synchrotron and 12 proton synchrotron in operation for particle therapy in Japan. Advanced slow extraction technique has been developed for raster scanning irradiation for carbon ion therapy in HIMAC and other facilities such as double RF knock-out method for ripple reduction and multiple-energy operation using extended flattop. This technique have enabled the scanning...

A third-integer resonant slow extraction system is being developed for the Fermilab's Delivery Ring to deliver protons to the Mu2e experiment. During a slow extraction process, the beam on target is liable to experience small intensity variations due to many factors. Owing to the experiment's strict requirements in the quality of the spill, a Spill Regulation System (SRS) is currently under...

Multiple energy extraction can deliver multiple energy flattops per accelerator cycle, improving treatment efficiency. In this process, the extraction efficiency of each flattop and the beam loss during non-extraction times are the key parameters. Such beam loss is mainly composed of the spill intensity overshoot, which reduces the number of particles available for treatment and thereby lowers...

Mitigating the micro-structure of the spill can be achieved by adjusting the machine settings or manipulating the beam properties. At SIS18, spill smoothing was commissioned by changing the longitudinal distribution of the circulating beam with RF cavities. Tune scan slow extraction was performed using two different frequencies for the RF cavities: bunching was performed at roughly 4.85 MHz (4...

The Next Ion Medical Machine Study (NIMMS) is an international collaboration initiative, established in 2018 and based at CERN, with the goal of developing new technologies for the future generation of accelerators for cancer therapy with ions. It has four work packages: superconducting magnets, gantries, compact synchrotrons and high-frequency linacs.
This contribution focuses on medical...

Electrostatic septa are critical components in particle accelerators, but operating them can be challenging. Optimizing their settings is key to enhancing beam quality and reducing losses. Recent techniques at CERN focus on minimizing setup time and monitoring spark rates to prevent equipment damage. This talk will share experiences and advancements from CERN, offering valuable insights into...

The CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) plays a crucial role in the CERN Fixed Target (FT) physics program by extracting proton beams towards the North Area (NA) targets. In order to gradually deliver the proton beams to the three primary NA targets, slow extraction is performed by approaching the third order resonance in the SPS, and the spill is eventually split on two vertical splitters...

The J-PARC Hadron beamline is a slow-extraction beamline with three primary beamlines. The A line (30 GeV, 65 kW, spill length of 2 seconds, cycle of 5.2 seconds) serves as a beamline for experiments utilizing secondary particles generated at the T1 target. The B-line (30 GeV, 24 W, spill length of 2 seconds, cycle of 5.2 seconds) branches out part of A-line beam, directly employing protons...

Slow extraction is needed for continuous particle spills from synchrotrons but is inherently lossy due to the non-zero particle density between circulating and extracted beam lines. At CERN's SPS, this results in significant activation of electrostatic septa, making it a highly radioactive area. The current SPS operational parameters and annual slow-extracted protons are already constrained by...

Radio-frequency (RF) techniques can be utilised to provide a tailored time structure to slow extraction users. In this contribution, a manipulation known as RF phase displacement is presented as a way of satisfying two different beam requests: (i) ~millisecond-scale spills for FLASH therapy/Radiation-to-Electronics users, and (ii) ~second-scale spills with nanosecond bunching for a dark-matter...

Spill uniformity is a key performance metric for the experimental users in the CERN North Area, who receive slow-extracted protons from the Super Proton Synchrotron. In this contribution, RF empty-bucket techniques are studied to suppress the low-frequency variations in the spill caused by power-converter ripple. The study includes simulation, measurement and the long-term experience after...

Single Event Effects (SEE) testing is a critical part of developing technologies for the interplanetary space environment. The proposed BNL High Energy Effects Test (HEET) facility that we would build off the AGS, is being designed for the needs of the SEE testing community. This short report will discuss the proposed design, from the slow extraction to a new beamline, and the capabilities of...

This presentation provides an overview of the current simulation framework used at MedAustron to simulate the multi-energy extraction process. These simulations aim to assist in the commissioning of a potential future implementation of MEE at MedAustron. The recent improvements in the Xsuite tracking code facilitate the simulation of beam re-acceleration, including all the necessary dynamic...

In recent years, mixed helium (He-2+) and carbon ion (C-6+) irradiation schemes have been proposed to facilitate in-vivo range verification in ion beam therapy. Such a scheme implies accelerating and extracting both ion species simultaneously, with the idea of using C-6+ for tumor treatment, while performing real-time dosimetry with He-2+ in a detector downstream of the patient.

The...

The synchrotron SIS100 has been optimized for operation with the partially
stripped ion $U^{28+}$, resulting in a number of unique challenges: transverse
emittances are comparatively large; the beam has high damage potential due to
the high $dE/dx$; the lattice must provide efficient collimation of ions losing
electrons in collisions with residual gas to prevent vacuum...

The GSI facility for research with heavy ions provides experiments with slow
extracted beams from the synchrotron SIS18 since the early 1990s. Presently, the
new FAIR facility is under construction next to the GSI site. FAIR will allow
experiments to continue and extend their heavy ion research programs by
providing beams of higher energies and higher intensities with slow extraction
from...

MedAustron is an ion therapy facility for protons and carbon ions located in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. The beam is presently extracted for clinical operation from the synchrotron with third-order resonant slow extraction via acceleration with a betatron core. However, due to the flexibility of the synchrotron operation for Non Clinical Research (NCR) purposes, other extraction methods can be...

Accelerators for ion beam therapy are always based on synchrotrons if ions other than protons are used.
In order to be able to use the raster scanning method, the beam must be slowly extracted from the synchrotron.
This talk summarizes the most important current requirements for slow extraction at medical facilities.
Additionally we ask: What future topics are being discussed a lot in...

A poster describing the limitations of extraction from a compact scaling fixed field accelerator. The LhARA Stage 2 FFA is used as the optics baseline, based on the RACCAM study. RF-KO is applied as the main extraction method.
Poster first presented at IPAC 2023 by A. Steinberg, with results published in IOP conference proceedings.

Inevitably, to evaluate the quality of the slow extracted beams delivered to experiments, we need to understand how different frequency components develop. How we evaluate this is to look at the beam spills in a beamline. However, while those are the end result and what the experiments see, they don’t directly represent how the different frequencies get imprinted into the spill. This is what...

The main magnet power supplies for the J-PARC Main Ring were upgraded from 2021 to 2023. In addition to increasing the maximum voltage output to shorten the acceleration time from 3GeV to 30GeV, reducing the current ripples for improving the beam spill structure was also one of the major objectives of the power supply upgrade. Although good results were obtained in current ripple measurements...

Results of two topics are presented in this contribution.
The first one is the influence of some quantities on the spill quality
of the KO extraction from the future GSI heavy ion synchrotron SIS100
studied with particle tracking simulations.
This technique is still foreseen as standard slow extraction technique in
SIS100. The results suggest that for such conditions the presently...

The excitation signals used in Radio Frequency Knock Out (RF KO) resonant slow extraction influence the temporal structure of the resulting spill. Therefore, a careful design of excitation signals is crucial to prevent artificial ripples in the spill caused by the excitation. At the same time, tailored signals can suppress ripples introduced by external sources such as power converters.
This...

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The Cryogenic Current Comparator (CCC) is a SQUID based superconducting device for intensity measurement, which has first been proposed as a beam diagnostics in the mid 90s at GSI. In the course of plannings for FAIR the CCC has been revitalized as intensity monitor for exotic/highly charged ions and antiprotons in the storage rings as well as for slow extracted beams in the extraction and...

In this talk, we investigate the transit time of particles in a third-integer resonant extraction process. Transit time is defined as the number of turns a particle takes to get extracted once it is in the unstable region, i.e., outside the triangular separatrix. The study of transit time is important because transit time determines the beam response time during resonant extraction and thus...

The Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Centre HIT uses the RF-KO slow extraction method to extract the particles from the synchrotron. To improve the spill quality of the extracted beam a new RF-signal was investigated which increases the R-value from 92.5% to 97.5%. The signal is a multiband RF signal broadened with a random BPSK at 3 frequency bands. The new KO-DDS which generates the signal is in...

Xsuite is a modular simulation package bringing to a single flexible and modern framework capabilities of different tools developed at CERN in the past decades, notably MAD-X, Sixtrack, Sixtracklib, COMBI and PyHEADTAIL. The suite consists of a set of Python modules (Xobjects, Xpart, Xtrack, Xcoll, Xfields, Xdeps) that can be flexibly combined together and with other accelerator- specific and...