J-PARC H^- ion source and space-charge neutralized LEBT for 100-mA high energy and high duty factor LINACs

In July 2019, a design beam of 8.3 × 10¹³ protons/pulse, whose 25 Hz operation produced the design beam power of 1 MW, was accelerated for 10.5 h by using the J-PARC 3 GeV rapid cycling synchrotron. During the operation, a J-PARC H^- ion source and a 400 MeV linear accelerator (LINAC) were operated with the design beam duty factor (BDF) of 1.25% (0.5 ms × 25 Hz) and ejected beam intensities of 58 mA and 50 mA, respectively. Furthermore, as expected from the transverse emittances measured in an H^- ion source test-stand, they were successfully operated with the BDF of 1.5% (0.6 ms × 25 Hz) and ejected beam intensities of 72 mA and 60 mA, respectively. In the operation, the beam pulse accelerated by the J-PARC radio-frequency quadrupole LINAC (RFQ) had a rapid rise-time of about 10 µs and an excellent flatness with a slow variation of ±0.2%. A flat beam pulse was produced by the predicted 100% space-charge neutralization (SCN) in the upstream half of the J-PARC low-energy beam transport (LEBT) with a vacuum pressure of 3.6 × 10^-4 Pa and the unpredicted high and almost constant SCN of about 69% in the downstream half of the LEBT with a vacuum pressure of 2.8 × 10^-5 Pa. The rapid rise-time was produced by the preformed 100% SCN with a preceding 100 µs 40 keV beam, which was not accelerated by the RFQ due to the low energy outside the RFQ acceptance. In the test-stand operated with the terminal voltage of 62 kV and BDF of 5% (1 ms × 50 Hz), the transverse emittances of a 100-mA beam were also measured to be suitable for the RFQs of high energy LINACs. A 100-mA high energy and high duty factor LINAC could be realized with this source since the transverse emittances were further improved by about 8% with the shortest beam extractor in the test-stand.