Open Access

Gleb Vorobjev, Christiane Andre, Winfried Barth, Elèni Berdermann, Gianluigi Clemente, Mircea Iuliu Ciobanu, Ludwig Dahl, Peter Forck, Peter Gerhard, Rainer Haseitl, Frank Herfurth, Michael Kaiser, Wolfgang Kaufmann, Oliver Kester, Heinz Jürgen Kluge, Nikita Kotovski, Christophor Kozhuharov, Michael Maier, Wolfgang Quint, Andreas Reiter, Alexey Sokolov, Thomas Stöhlker, Jochen Pfister, Ulrich Ratzinger, Alwin Schempp

• The HITRAP linear decelerator currently being set up at GSI will provide slow, few keV/u highly charged ions for atomic physics experiments. The expected beam intensity is up to 105 ions per shot. To optimize phase and amplitude of the RF systems intensity, bunch length and kinetic energy of the particles need to be monitored. The bunch length that we need to fit is about 2 ns, which is typically measured by capacitive pickups. However, they do not work for the low beam intensities that we face. We investigated the bunch length with a fast CVD diamond detector working in single particle counting mode. Averaging over 8 shots yields a clear, regular picture of the bunched beam. Energy measurements by capacitive pickups are limited by the presence of intense primary and partially decelerated beam and hence make tuning of the IH-structure impossible. The energy of the decelerated fraction of the beam behind the first deceleration cavity was determined to about 10 % accuracy with a permanent dipole magnet combined with a MCP. Better detector calibration should help reaching the required 1%. Design of the detectors as well as the results of the measurements will be presented.