Efficiency of High Order Modes Extraction in the European XFEL Linac

The serial production of components for the European XFEL linac was started in 2011 and reached the plannedlevel of 8 cavities (1 module) per week in 2013. The measurements of High Order Modes (HOM)characteristics under cryogenic conditions (2K) are being done at the Accelerating Module Test Facility (AMTF) bythe IFJ-PAN Team in collaboration with DESY groups. More than 50 % of the cavities have been alreadyproduced and 30 % of the whole amount were measured during either cavity vertical tests or module tests.We present first statistics of these measurements and analyze the efficiency of HOM extraction

Overview and Status of the MedAustron Ion Therapy Center Accelerator

The synchrotron-based MedAustron accelerator in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, has seen the first clinical beam and has been certified as a medical accelerator in December 2016. This represented a major milestone for the facility whose original design originated more than a decade ago and construction started four years ago. The accelerator is designed to deliver clinical proton beams 60-253 MeV and carbon ions 120-400 MeV/u to three ion therapy irradiation rooms (IRs), including a room with a proton Gantry. Beams up to 800 MeV will be provided to a fourth room dedicated to non-clinical research. Presently, proton beams are delivered to the horizontal beam lines of three irradiation rooms. In parallel, commissioning of the accelerator with Carbon ions and the installation of the Gantry beam line are ongoing. At MedAustron, a third-order resonance extraction method is used to extract particles from the synchrotron in a slow controlled process over a spill time of 0.1-10 seconds to facilitate the measurement and control of the delivered radiation dose during clinical treatments. The main characteristics of the accelerator and the results obtained during the commissioning are presented

The Beam Quality Assurance of the MedAustron Particle Therapy Accelerator

The delivery of clinical beams for patient treatment at the MedAustron Ion Therapy Center requires extensive accelerator performance verifications, which are performed in several steps. In first instance, the key parameters of the beam delivered to the irradiation rooms (beam position, spot size, energy and intensity) are verified via measurements performed with beam diagnostic devices distributed along the accelerator. The second verification step consists in testing the full functionality of the therapy accelerator, including the medical frontend: scanning magnets performance, intensity monitoring and safety features. The final verification step is the quality assurance (QA) done by the medical department. An extended set of reference measurements assures the fast identification of the faulty components in case of a performance deviation, and the totality of the accumulated data allows in-depth analysis of the accelerator performance. We present here the trends and correlations observed during the first verification step for the most important parameters, as well as the lessons learned through all the implementation stages of the beam quality assurance

Beam Measurements in the MedAustron Synchrotron With Slow Extraction and Off-Momentum Operation

The MedAustron Ion Therapy Center is a medical accelerator facility for hadron therapy cancer treatment using protons and carbon ions. The facility features 4 irradiation rooms, three of which are dedicated to clinical operation and a fourth one dedicated to non-clinical research. The latter was handed over to researchers in autumn 2016. A 7 MeV/n injector feeds a 77 m circumference synchrotron which provides beams for treatment and research. Routine verification measurements in the synchrotron involve beam emittance, dispersion as well as tunes and chromaticity. The horizontal and vertical emittance are measured using scraping plates and a direct current transformer. The dispersion function in the ring is determined by sweeping the synchrotron RF frequency while measuring the beam position in the shoe-box pick-ups. The horizontal and vertical betatron tune and chromaticity are measured with Direct Diode Detection electronics, developed at CERN, while changing the beam position with the RF radial loop. The beam is kept off-momentum, thus in dispersive regions the closed orbit is largely offset from the central orbit. Methods for beam measurements in the synchrotron are presented