General interest has been shown over the last years for compact and more
affordable facilities for hadron-therapy. The High-Gradient (HG) know-how and
technology for normal-conducting accelerating RF (Radio-Frequency) electron
linac (linear accelerator) structures recently developed for projects such as
CLIC (CERN), has raised the achievable accelerating gradient from 20-30 MV/m up
to 100-120 MV/m. This gain has come through a better understanding of the
high-power RF vacuum arcs or breakdowns (BD) phenomena, the development of
quantitative HG RF design methods and refinements in fabrication techniques.
This can allow for more compact linacs also for protons, which is potentially
important in the new trend in hadron-therapy of using linacs able to provide
protons of 70-230 MeV or light ions of 100-400 MeV/u. Linacs are of particular
interest for medical applications because they can provide a high degree of
flexibility for treatment, such as running at 100-400 Hz pulse rate and
pulse-to-pulse beam energy (and intensity) variations. This kind of accelerator
is very well suited to treat moving organs with 4D multi-painting spot scanning
technique. HG operation is limited by the BD phenomena and is characterized by
the BD-Rate. New fresh structures initially operate at a reduced performance
and must be conditioned through extended high-power rf operation until the
maximum operational gradient is reached. This process is a time consuming, and
consequently costly task (> 350 million pulses) which is important to
understand and reduce. The IFIC HG-RF laboratory is designed to host a
high-power and high-repetition rate facility for testing S-Band (2.9985 GHz)
normal-conducting RF structures. This facility will allow the development, RF
conditioning and studies of the BD phenomena in HG structures.General interest has been shown over the last years for compact and more
affordable facilities for hadron-therapy. The High-Gradient (HG) know-how and
technology for normal-conducting accelerating RF (Radio-Frequency) electron
linac (linear accelerator) structures recently developed for projects such as
CLIC (CERN), has raised the achievable accelerating gradient from 20-30 MV/m up
to 100-120 MV/m. This gain has come through a better understanding of the
high-power RF vacuum arcs or breakdowns (BD) phenomena, the development of
quantitative HG RF design methods and refinements in fabrication techniques.
This can allow for more compact linacs also for protons, which is potentially
important in the new trend in hadron-therapy of using linacs able to provide
protons of 70-230 MeV or light ions of 100-400 MeV/u. Linacs are of particular
interest for medical applications because they can provide a high degree of
flexibility for treatment, such as running at 100-400 Hz pulse rate and
pulse-to-pulse beam energy (and intensity) variations. This kind of accelerator
is very well suited to treat moving organs with 4D multi-painting spot scanning
technique. HG operation is limited by the BD phenomena and is characterized by
the BD-Rate. New fresh structures initially operate at a reduced performance
and must be conditioned through extended high-power rf operation until the
maximum operational gradient is reached. This process is a time consuming, and
consequently costly task (> 350 million pulses) which is important to
understand and reduce. The IFIC HG-RF laboratory is designed to host a
high-power and high-repetition rate facility for testing S-Band (2.9985 GHz)
normal-conducting RF structures. This facility will allow the development, RF
conditioning and studies of the BD phenomena in HG structures
