Vacuum properties and operation stability of the radio-frequency quadrupole accelerator in Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex linac

Morishita, Takatoshi  ; Kondo, Yasuhiro   ; Oguri, Hidetomo  ; Hasegawa, Kazuo

In the J-PARC, the linac provides 400 MeV hydrogen negative ion beam to the following 3GeV synchrotron. For the beam current upgrade, the new radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) linac, in which the design peak beam current was increased from 30 to 50 mA, has been fabricated and installed in the beam line in summer 2014. The beam provision to users started in the beginning of November, 2014. Since then, the RFQ operates without serious problems for more than two years, however, the operation stability of the RFQ with beam acceleration was not enough due to the sparking in the cavity. We consider that the impurities in the vacuum chamber are related to this sparking phenomena. The design and performance of the RFQ vacuum system is described in this paper, then, the relationship among the sparking rates, the residual gas species in the vacuum chamber, and the beam operation parameters are described.