Design and beam dynamics studies of a chopper for the JAEA-ADS LEBT

Yee-Rendon, B.; Kondo, Yasuhiro   ; Tamura, Jun  ; Maekawa, Fujio  ; Meigo, Shinichiro   

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) designs a 30-MW CW proton linear accelerator (linac) as a key component for the accelerator-driven subcritical system (ADS) project, aimed at nuclear waste management. The low energy beam transport (LEBT) in JAEA-ADS uses charge neutralization to minimize space-charge effects, which are the primary cause of beam loss in high-power accelerators. During commissioning and power ramp-up, precise control of the duty cycle is required for safety and machine protection; thus, a chopper system will be installed to manage the beam power. The chopper is located at the LEBT, to facilitate the disposal of the excess beam power, but its operation will affect the charge neutralization producing beam transients that could lead to beam loss. To shed light on this, we created a beam optics model for the chopper using an analytic approach to determine the required characteristics like voltage and dimensions, which was confirmed through TraceWin simulations. Subsequently, we analyzed the chopper's impact on space-charge compensation to evaluate the beam transients in the LEBT. This study reports the design of the chopper and its effects on beam performance for the JAEA-ADS LEBT.