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Cancer has become one of the most fatal diseases. The Heidelberg Heavy Ion Cancer Therapy (HICAT) has the potential to become an important and efficient treatment method because of its excellent “Bragg peak” characteristics and on-line irradiation control by the PET diagnostics. The dedicated Heidelberg Heavy Ion Cancer Therapy Project includes two ECR ion sources, a RF linear injector, a synchrotron and three treatment rooms. It will deliver 4*10 high 10 protons, or 1*10 high 10 He, or 1*10 high 9 Carbons, or 5*10 high 8 Oxygens per synchrotron cycle with the beam energy 50-430AMeV for the treatments. The RF linear injector consists of a 400AkeV RFQ and of a very compact 7AMeV IH-DTL accelerator operated at 216.816MHz. The development of the IH-DTL within the HICAT project is a great challenge with respect to the present state of the DTL art because of the following reasons: • The highest operating frequency (216.816MHz) of all IH-DTL cavities; • Extremely large cavity length to diameter ratio of about 11; • IH-DTL with three internal triplets; • The highest effective voltage gain per meter (5.5MV/m); • Very short MEBT design for the beam matching. The following achievements have been reached during the development of the IH-DTL injector for HICAT : The KONUS beam dynamics design with LORASR code fulfills the beam requirement of the HICAT synchrotron at the injection point. The simulations for the IH-DTL injector have been performed not only with a homogeneous input beam, but also with the actual particle distribution from the exit of the HICAT RFQ accelerator as delivered by the PARMTEQ code. The output longitudinal normalized emittance for 95% of all particles is 2.00AkeVns, the emittance growth is less than 24%, while the X-X’ and Y-Y’ normalized emittance are 0.77mmmrad and 0.62mmmrad, respectively. The emittance growth in X-X’ is less than 18%, and the emittance growth in Y-Y’ is less than 5%. Based on the transverse envelopes of the transported particles, the redesign of the buncher drift tubes at the RFQ high energy end has been made to get a higher transit time factor for this novel RFQ internal buncher. An optimized effective buncher gap voltage of 45.4KV has been calculated to deliver a minimized longitudinal beam emittance, while the influence of the effective buncher voltage on the transverse emittance can be neglected. Six different tuning concepts were investigated in detail while tuning the 1:2 scaled HICAT IH model cavity. ‘Volume Tuning’ by a variation of the cavity cross sectional area can compensate the unbalanced capacitance distribution in case of an extreme beta-lambda-variation along an IH cavity. ‘Additional Capacitance Plates’ or copper sheets clamped on drift tube stems are a fast way for checking the tuning sensitivity, but they will be replaced by massive copper blocks mounted on the drift tube girders finally. ‘Lens Coupling’ is an important tuning to stabilize the operation mode and to increase or decrease the coupling between neighboring sections. ‘Tube Tuning’ is the fine tuning concept and also the standard tuning method to reach the needed field distributions as well as the gap voltage distributions. ‘Undercut Tuning’ is a very sensitive tuning for the end sections and with respect to the voltage distribution balance along the structure. The different types of ‘plungers’ in the 3rd and 4th sections have different effects on the resonance frequency and on the field distribution. The different triplet stems and the geometry of the cavity end have been also investigated to reach the design field and voltage distributions. Finally, the needed uniform field distribution along the IH-DTL cavity and the corresponding effective voltage distribution were realized, the remaining maximum gap voltage difference was less than 5% for the model cavity. The several important higher order modes were also measured. The RF tuning of the IH-DTL model cavity delivers the final geometry parameters of the IH-DTL power cavity. A rectangular cavity cross section was adopted for the first time for this IH-DTL cavity. This eases the realization of the volume tuning concept in the 1st and 2nd sections. Lens coupling determines the final distance between the triplet and the girder. The triplets are mounted on the lower cavity half shell. The Microwave Studio simulations have been carried out not only for the HICAT model cavity, but also for the final geometry of the IH-DTL power cavity. The field distribution for the operation mode H110 fits to the model cavity measurement as well as the Higher Order Modes. The simulations prove the IH-DTL geometrical design. On the other hand, the precision of one simulation with 2.3 million mesh points for full cross section area and the CPU time more than 15hours on a DELL PC with Intel Pentium 4 of 2.4GHz and 2.096GRAM were exploited to their limit when calculating the real parameters for the two final machining iterations during production. The shunt impedance of the IH-DTL power cavity is estimated by comparison with the existing tanks to about 195.8MOmega/m, which fits to the simulation result of 200.3MOmega/m with reducing the conductivity to the 5.0*10 high 7 Omega-1m-1. The effective shunt impedance is 153 MOmega/m. The needed RF power is 755kW. The expected quality factor of the IH-DTL cavity is about 15600. The IH-DTL power cavity tuning measurements before cavity copper plating have been performed. The results are within the specifications. There is no doubt that the needed accuracy of the voltage distribution will be reached with the foreseen fine tuning concepts in the last steps.
The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) at GSI Darmstadt will provide unprecedented intensities of protons and heavy ions up to uranium at energies of up to 29 GeV for protons and 2.7 GeV/u for Uranium 28+. To achieve high intensities in the synchrotron accelerators, high beam currents have to be provided by the injector linear accelerators. High current heavy ion beams are provided by the Universal Linear Accelerator (UNILAC), which in its current state will not be able to provide the required FAIR beam currents. This thesis deals with the development of upgrades for the UNILAC to ensure its high current capability. The first improvement is a matching section (MEBT) for the interface between the RFQ and the IH-DTL of the existing high current injector HSI at the UNILAC. With this new MEBT section, particle losses are eliminated and the overall beam quality is improved. As a second improvement, a complete replacement of the existing Alvarez-DTL is presented. A combination of efficient IH-type cavities and KONUS beam dynamics results in a reduction of the linac length from about 60 m (Alvarez) to just 23 m (new IH-DTL) while providing the same energy and fulfilling FAIR requirements of a high beam current and beam quality. This thesis contains a detailed beam dynamics design of the new linac including some fundamental investigations of the KONUS beam dynamics concept. A cross-check of the beam dynamics design was performed with two independent multi-particle simulation codes. Detailed error studies were conducted to investigate the influence of manufacturing, alignment and operating errors on the beam dynamics performance. Additionally, all five linac cavities were designed, optimized, and their RF parameters including power requirements calculated to provide a comprehensive linac design.
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurde ein verbessertes Buncher-System für Hochfrequenzbeschleuniger mit niedrigem und mittlerem Ionenstrom entwickelt. Die entwickelte Methodik hat ermöglicht, ein effektives, vereinfachtes Buncher-System für die Injektion in HF-Beschleuniger wie RFQs, Zyklotrons, DTLs usw. zu entwerfen, welches kleine Ausgangsemittanzen und beträchtliche Strahltransmissionen erzielt. Um einen mono-energetischen und kontinuierlichen Strahl aus einer Ionenquelle für den Einschuss in eine Hochfrequenz-Beschleunigerstruktur anzupassen, wird eine Energiemodulation benötigt, die im weiteren Verlauf (Driftstrecke) zur Längsfokussierung des Strahls führt. Durch eine Sägezahnwellenform wird die ideale Energiemodulation aufgrund der linearen Abhängigkeit zwischen der Energie der Teilchen und ihren relativen Phasen erreicht. Dies ist jedoch technologisch nicht möglich, da Teilchenbeschleuniger Spannungsniveaus im Bereich kV bis 100 kV benötigen. Dagegen ist für eine solche Zielsetzung eine räumliche Trennung der sinusförmigen Anregung mit der Grundfrequenz und höheren Harmonischen möglich.
Daher wurde in dieser Arbeit ein verbesserter harmonischer Buncher, der sogenannte „Double Drift Harmonic Buncher - DDHB“ entwickelt, welcher zahlreiche Vorteile hat. Eine geringe longitudinale Emittanz sowie finanzielle Aspekte sprechen für diesen Lösungsansatz. Die Hauptelemente eines DDHB Systems sind zwei Kavitäten, die durch eine Driftlänge L1 getrennt sind, wobei der erste Resonator mit der Grundfrequenz bei -90° synchroner Phase und angelegter Spannung V1 und der zweite Resonator bei der zweiten harmonischen Frequenz mit +90 synchroner Phase und angelegter Spannung V2 betrieben werden. Schließlich ist eine zweite Drift L2 am Ende des Arrays für eine longitudinale Strahlfokussierung am Hauptbeschleunigereingang erforderlich. Somit erfüllt ein solcher Aufbau das angestrebte Ziel einer hohen Einfangseffizienz und einer kleinen longitudinalen Emittanz durch Anpassen der vier Designparameter V1, L1, V2 und L2.
Das Verständnis der Fokussierung, ausgehend von einem Gleichstromstrahl, einschließlich der Raumladungskräfte, ist einer der wesentlichen Bestandteile der Strahlphysik. Viele kommerzielle Codes bieten Simulationsmöglichkeiten in diesem Anwendungsbereich. Ihre Ansätze bleiben jedoch dem Anwender meist verborgen, oder es fehlen wichtige Details zur genauen Abbildung des vorliegenden Konzepts. Daher bestand eine Hauptaufgabe dieser Arbeit darin, einen speziellen Multi-Particle-Tracking-Beam-Dynamics-Code (BCDC) zu entwickeln, bei dem der Raumladungseffekt während des Bunch-Vorgangs, ausgehend von einem DC-Strahl berechnet wird. Der BCDC - Code enthält elementare Routinen wie Drift und Beschleunigungsspalt oder magnetische Linse für die transversale Strahlfokussierung und Raumladungsberechnungen unter Berücksichtigung der Auswirkungen der nächsten Nachbar-Bunche (NNB). Der Raumladungsalgorithmus in BCDC basiert auf einer direkten Coulomb- Gitter-Gitter-Wechselwirkung und Berechnungen des elektrischen Feldes durch Lokalisierung der Ladungsdichte auf einem kartesischen Gitter. Um Genauigkeit zu erreichen, werden die Feldberechnungen in Längsrichtung symmetrisch um das zentrale Bucket (βλ-Größe) erweitert, so dass das Simulationsfeld dreimal so groß ist. Die zentrale Teilchenverteilung wird dann nach jedem Schritt in die benachbarten Buckets kopiert. Anschließend werden die resultierenden Felder im Hauptgitterfeld neu berechnet, indem die elektrischen Felder im Hauptgitterfeld mit denen aus den benachbarten Regionen überlagert werden. Ohne diese Methode würde z. B. ein kontinuierlicher Strahl, welcher jedoch in der Simulation nur innerhalb einer Zelle der Länge βλ definiert ist, zu einer resultierenden Raumladungsfeldkomponente Ez an beiden Rändern der Zelle führen. Ein solches unphysikalisches Ergebnis konnte durch die Anwendung der NNB-Technik bereits weitgehend eliminiert werden. Zusätzlich zum NNB-Feature verfügt das BCDC über eine weitere Besonderheit nämlich die sogenannte Raumladungskompensation (SCC). Aufgrund der Ionisierung des Restgases kommt es entlang des Niederenergiestrahltransports zu einer teilweisen Raumladungskompensation, und zwar am und hinter dem Bunchersystem mit unterschiedlichen Prozentsätzen. Eines der Hauptziele des DDHB-Konzepts besteht darin, es für Hochstromstrahlanwendungen zu entwickeln. Dabei ermöglicht die teilweise Raumladungskompensation, dass das Design in der Praxis höhere Stromniveaus erreicht. Dadurch ist das BCDC-Programm ein leistungsstarkes Werkzeug für Simulationen in künftigen, stromstarken Projekten. Proof-of-Principle-Designs wurden in dieser Arbeit entwickelt.
This Dissertation deals with the development of FAIR-relevant X-ray diagnostics based on the interaction of lasers and particle beams with matter. The associated experimental methods are supposed to be employed in the HIHEX-experiments in the HHT-cave of the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy-Ion Research GmbH (GSI) in Phase-0 and in the APPA-cave at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany.
Diagnostic of high aerial density targets that will be used in FAIR experiments demands intense and highly penetrating X-ray sources. Laser generated well-directe relativistic electron beams that interact with high Z materials is an excellent tool for generation of short-pulse high luminous sources of MeV-gammas.
In pilot experiments carried out at the PHELIX laser system, GSI Darmstadt, relativistic electrons were produced in a long scale plasma of near critical electron density (NCD) by the mechanism of the direct laser acceleration (DLA). Low density polymer foam layers preionised by a well-defined nanosecond laser pulse were used as NCD targets. The analysis of the measured electron spectra showed up to 10- fold increase of the electron "temperature" from T_Hot = 1–2 MeV, measured for the case of the interaction of 1–2 ×10^19 Wcm^(−2) ps-laser pulse with a planar foil, up to 14 MeV for the case when the relativistic laser pulse propagates through the by a ns-pulse preionised foam layer. In this case, up to 80–90 MeV electron energy was registered. An increase of the electron energy was accompanied by a strong increase of the number of relativistic electrons and well-defined directionality of the relativistic electron beam measured to be (12 ±1)° (FWHM). This directionality increases the gamma flux on target by far compared to the soft X-ray sources.
Additionally to laser based active diagnostics, passive techniques involving inherent X-ray fluorescence radiation of projectile and target emitted during heavy-ion target interaction can be used to measure the ion beam distribution on shot. This information is of great importance, since the target size is chosen to be smaller than the beam focus in order to ensure homogeneous heating of the HIHEX-target by the ion beam. High amounts of parasitic radiation and activation of experimental equipment is expected for experiments at the APPA-cave. For this reason, all electronic devices must be placed at a safe distance to the target chamber. In order to transport the signal over a large distance, the X-ray image of the target irradiated by heavy-ions has to be converted into an optical one.
For these purposes, the X-ray Conversion to Optical radiation and Transport (XCOT)-system was developed in the frame of a BMBF-project and commissioned in two beamtimes at the UNILAC, GSI during this work.
In experiments, we observed intense radiation of target atoms (K-shell transitions in Cu at 8–8.3 keV and L-shell transition in Ta) ionised in collisions with heavy ions as well as Doppler-shifted L-shell transitions of Au-projectiles passing through targets. This radiation can be used for monochromatic (dispersive elements like bent crystals) or polychromatic (pinhole) 2D X-ray mapping of the ion beam intensity distribution in the interaction region during the beam-target interaction. We measured the efficiency of the X-ray photon production depending on the target thickness and the number of ions passing through the target. The spatial resolution of the XCOT-system based on the multi-pinhole camera was measured to be (91±17) μm for the image magnification factor M = 2. It was considerably improved by application of a toroidally bent quartz crystal and reached 30 μm at M = 6. This resolution is optimal to image the distribution of a 1mm in diameter ion beam. As next step, the XCOT-system will be tested during the SIS18 beam-time at the HHT-experimental area.
The work presented in this thesis addresses a key issue of the CBM experiment at FAIR, which aims to study charm production in heavy ion collisions at energies ranging from 10 to 40 AGeV . For the first time in this kinematical range, open charm mesons will be used as a probe of the nuclear fireball. Despite of their short decay length, which is typically in the order of few 100 µm in the laboratory frame, those mesons will be identified by reconstructing their decay vertex.
Development of prototype components for the Silicon Tracking System of the CBM experiment at FAIR
(2013)
The CBM experiment at future accelerator facility FAIR will investigate the properties of nuclear matter under extreme conditions. The experimental programm is different from the heavy-ion experiments at RHIC (BNL) and LHC (CERN) that create nuclear matter at high temperatures. In contrast, the study of the QCD phase diagram in the region of the highest net baryon densities and moderate temperatures that is weakly explored will be performed with high precision. For this, collisions of different heavy-ion beams at the energies of 10–45GeV/nucleon with nuclear target will be measured.
The physics programme of the CBM experiment includes measurement of both rare probes and bulk observables that originate from various phases of a nucleus-nucleus collision. In particular, decay of particles with charm quarks can be registered by reconstructing the decay vertex detached from the primary interaction point by several hundreds of micrometers (e.g., decay length c Tau = 123 µm for D0 meson). For this, precise tracking and full event reconstruction with up to 600 charged particle tracks per event within acceptance are required. Other rare probes require operation at interaction rate of up to 10MHz. The detector system that performs tracking has to provide high position resolution on the order of 10 µm, operate at high rates and have radiation tolerant design with low material budget.
The Silicon Tracking System (STS) is being designed for charged-particle tracking in a magnetic field. The system consists of eight tracking station located in the aperture of a dipole magnet with 1T field. For tracks with momentum above 1GeV, momentum resolution of such a system is expected to be about 1%. In order to fulfill this task, thorough optimization of the detector design is required. In particular, minimal material budget has to be achieved.
Production of a detector module requires research and development activities with respect to the module components and their integration. A detector module is a basic functional unit that includes a sensor, an analogue microcable and frontend electronics mounted on a support structure. The objective of the thesis is to perform quality assurance tests of the prototype module components in order to validate the concept of the detector module and to demonstrate its operation using radioactive sources and particle beams.
Double-sided silicon microstrip detectors have been chosen as sensor technology for the STS because of the combination of a good spatial resolution, two-dimensional coordinate measurement achieved within low material budget (0.3%X0), high readout speed and sufficient radiation tolerance. Several generations of double-sided silicon microstrip sensors have been manufactured in order to explore the radiation hard design features and the concept of a large-area sensor compatible with ladder-type structure of the detector module. In particular, sensors with double metal layer on both sides and active area of 62×62mm2 have been produced. Electrical characterization of the sensors has been performed in order to establish the overall operability as well as to extract the device parameters. Current-voltage, capacitance-voltage characteristics and interstrip parameters have been measured.
Readout of the sensors has been done using self-triggering front-end electronics. A front-end board has been developed based on the n-XYTER readout chip with data driven architecture and capable of operating at 32MHz readout rate. The front-end board included an external analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Calibration of the ADC has been performed using both 241Am X-ray source and external pulse generator. Threshold calibration and investigation of temperature dependence of chip parameters has been carried out.
Low-mass support structures have been developed using carbon fibre that has the rigidity to hold the detector modules and introduce minimal Coulomb scattering of the particle tracks. Analogue microcables have been produced with aluminium traces on a polyimide substrate, thus combining good electrical connection with low material budget. Microcable structure includes several layers optimized for low trace capacitance and thus low-noise performance.
A demonstrator tracking telescope has been constructed and operated in several beam tests including 2.5GeV proton beam at COSY synchrotron (Jülich). Three tracking stations have been complemented with several beam hodoscopes. Analysis of the beam data has yielded information on analogue and timing response, beam profile. Tracking and alignment information has been obtained. Beam stability has been evaluated using specially developed monitoring tools.
As a result of conducted studies, performance of the module components have been evaluated and requirements to the detector module have been formulated. Practical suggestions have been made with respect to the structure of the detector module, whereas precise definition of the final detector module design was outside of the scope of this thesis.
A basic introduction to RFQs has been given in the first part of this thesis. The principle and the main ideas of the RFQ have been described and a small summary of different resonator concepts has been given. Two different strategies of designing RFQs have been introduced. The analytic description of the electric fields inside the quadrupole channel has been derived and the limitation of these approaches were shown. The main work of this thesis was the implementation and analysis of a Multigrid Poisson solver to describe the potential and electric field of RFQs which are needed to simulate the particle dynamics accurately. The main two ingredients of a Multigrid Poisson solver are the ability of a Gauß-Seidel iteration method to smooth the error of an approximation within a few iteration steps and the coarse grid principle. The smoothing corresponds to a damping of the high frequency components of the error. After the smoothing, the error term can well be approximated on a coarser grid in which the low frequency components of the error on the fine grid are converted to high frequency errors on the coarse grid which can be damped further with the same Gauß-Seidel method. After implementation, the multigrid Poisson solver was analyzed using two different type of test problems: with and without a charge density. After illustrating the results of the multigrid Poisson solver, a comparison to the field of the old multipole expansion method was made. The multipole expansion method is an accurate representation of the field within the minimum aperture, as limited by cylindrical symmetry. Within these limitations the multigrid Poisson solver and the multipole expansion method agree well. Beyond the limitation the two method give different fields. It was shown that particles leave the region in which the multipole expansion method gives correct fields and that the transmission is affected therefrom as well as the single particle dynamic. The multigridPoisson solver also gives a more realistic description of the field in the beginning of the RFQ, because it takes the tank wall into account, and this effect is shown as well. Closing the analysis of the external field, the transmission and fraction of accelerated particles of the set of 12 RFQs for the two different methods were shown. For RFQs with small apertures and big modulations the two different method give different values for the transmission due to the limitation of the multipole expansion method. The internal space charge fields without images was analyzed at the level of single particle dynamic and compared to the well known SCHEFF routine from LANL, showing major differences for the analyzed particle. For comparing influences on the transmissions of the set of 12 RFQs a third space charge routine (PICNIC) was considered as well. The basic shape of the transmission curve was the same independent of space charge routines, but the absolute values differ a little from routine to routine, with SCHEFF about 2% lower than the other routines. The multigrid Poisson solver and PICNIC agree quite well (less than 1%), but PICNIC has an extremely long running time. The major advantage of the multigrid Poisson solver in calculating space charge effects compared to the other two routines used here is that the Poisson solver can take the effect of image charges on the electrodes into account by just changing the boundaries to have the shape of the vanes whereas all other settings remain unchanged. It was demonstrated that the effect of image charges on the vanes on the space charge field is very big in the region close to the electrodes. Particles in that region will see a stronger transversely defocusing force than without images. The result is that the transmission decreases by as much as 10% which is considerably more than determined by other (inexact) routines before. This is an important result, because knowing about the big effect of image charges on the electrodes it allows it to taken into account while designing the RFQ to increase the performance of the machine. It is also an important factor in resolving the traditional difference observed between the transmission of actual RFQs and the transmission predicted by earlier simulations. In the last chapter of this thesis some experimental work on the MAFF (Munich Accelerator for Fission Fragments) IH-RFQ is described. The machine was assembled in Frankfurt and a beam test stand was built. The shunt impedance of the structure was measured using different techniques, the output energy of the structure were measured and finally its transmission was determined and compared to the beam dynamics simulations of the RFQ. Unfortunately, the transmission measurements were done without exact knowledge of the beam’s emittance. So the comparison to the simulation is somewhat rough, but with a reasonable guess of the emittance a good comparison between the measurement and simulation was obtained.
The laser-driven acceleration of protons from thin foils irradiated by hollow high-intensity laser beams in the regime of target normal sheath acceleration is reported for the first time. The use of hollow beams aims at reducing the initial emission solid angle of the TNSA source, due to a flattening of the electron sheath at the target rear side. The experiments were conducted at the PHELIX laser facility at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH with laser intensities in the range from 10^18 to 10^20 W/cm^2. We observed an average reduction of the half opening angle by (3.07±0.42)° or (13.2±2)% when the targets have a thickness between 12 to 14 μm. In addition, the highest proton energies were achieved with the hollow laser beam in comparison to the typical Gaussian focal spot.
Heterodyne array receivers are employed in radio astronomy to reduce the observing time needed for mapping extended sources. One of the main factors limiting the amount of pixels in terahertz receivers is the difficulty of generating a sufficient amount of local oscillator power. Another challenge is efficient diplexing and coupling of local oscillator and signal power to the detectors. These problems are attacked in this dissertation by proposing the application of two vacuum electronic terahertz amplifier types for the amplification of the LO-signal and by introducing a new method for finding the defects in a quasioptical diplexer.
A traveling wave tube (TWT) design based on a square helix slow wave structure (SWS) at 825 GHz is introduced. It exhibits a simulated small-signal gain of 18.3 dB and a 3-dB bandwidth of 69 GHz. In order to generate LO-power at even higher frequencies, the operation of an 850-GHz square helix TWT as a frequency doubler has been studied. A simulated conversion efficiency of 7% to 1700 GHz, comparable with the state-of-art solid-state doublers, has been achieved for an input power of 25 mW.
The other amplifier type discussed in this work is a 1-THz cascade backward wave amplifier based on a double corrugated waveguide SWS. Specifically, three input/output coupler types between a rectangular waveguide and the SWS are presented. The structures have been realized with microfabrication, and the results of loss measurements at 1 THz will be shown.
Diplexing of the LO- and signal beams is often performed with a Martin-Puplett interferometer. Misalignment and deformation of the quasioptical components causes the polarization state of the output signal to be incorrect, which leads to coupling losses. A ray-tracing program has been developed for studying the influence of such defects. The measurement results of the diplexer of a multi-pixel terahertz receiver operated at the APEX telescope have been analyzed with the program, and the results are presented. The program allows the quasioptical configuration of the diplexer to be corrected in order to obtain higher receiver sensitivity.