Commissioning of a high power linac at GANIL: Beam power ramp-up

Abstract

SPIRAL2 is a high power linear accelerator part of the GANIL laboratory. This superconducting (SC) linac can accelerate cw light ions to heavy ions at energies up to 40 MeV/nucleon and 14.5 MeV/nucleon, respectively. In July 2019, the authorization to fully operate the SPIRAL2 SC linac permitted to start the commissioning of the medium energy beam transport line and SC linac. The main milestone of the commissioning in 2020 was to validate the transport and linac design by increasing the duty cycle up to 10% with a proton beam. This paper presents the strategy used by the commissioning team to increase the beam power, as well as the results obtained using different diagnostics. The extrapolation from obtained measurements to 100% duty cycle was also performed; the results are presented.