Elena Benedetto

Superconducting, curved magnets can reduce accelerator footprints by producing strong fields ( > 3 T ) and reducing the total number of magnets through their capability for combined-function multipolar fields, making them an attractive choice for applications such as heavy ion therapy. There exists the problem that the effect of strongly curved harmonics and fringe fields on compact accelerator beam dynamics is not well represented: existing approaches use integrated cylindrical multipoles to describe and model the fields for beam dynamics studies, which are invalid in curved coordinate systems and assume individual errors cancel out over the full machine. In the modeling of these machines, the effects of strongly curved harmonics and fringe fields on compact accelerator beam dynamics need to be properly included. An alternative approach must be introduced for capturing off-axis fields in a strongly curved magnet, which may affect long-term beam stability in a compact accelerator. In this article, we investigate the impacts of deploying a curved canted-cosine-theta (CCT) superconducting magnet in a synchrotron for the first time. We develop a method to analyze and characterize the 3D curved fields of an electromagnetic model of a CCT developed for the main bending magnets of a compact (27 m circumference) carbon ion therapy synchrotron, designed within the Heavy Ion Therapy Research Integration Plus European project (HITRIPlus), and the CERN Next Ion Medical Machine Study (NIMMS). The fields are modelled in the compact synchrotron in -/ to study their effects on beam dynamics and long-term beam stability. Results indicate that the synchrotron is able to operate with the presence of the magnetic field gradients, with considerable improvement to the long-term beam stability in the machine after tuning the higher order field gradients. The insights gained through the methods presented allow the optimisation of both magnet and synchrotron designs, with the potential to impact the operational performance of future ion therapy facilities.

The battle against cancer remains a top priority for society, with an urgent need to develop therapies capable of targeting challenging tumours while preserving patient's quality of life. Hadron Therapy (HT), which employs accelerated beams of protons, carbon ions, and other charged particles, represents a significant frontier in cancer treatment. This modality offers superior precision and efficacy compared to conventional methods, delivering therapeutic the dose directly to tumours while sparing healthy tissue. Even though 350,000 patients have already been treated worldwide with protons and 50,000 with carbon ions, HT is still a relatively young field and more research as well as novel, cost-effective and compact accelerator technologies are needed to make this treatment more readily available globally. Interestingly the very first patient was irradiated with protons in September 1954, the same month and year CERN was founded. Both of these endeavours are embedded in cutting edge technologies and multidisciplinary collaboration. HT is finally gaining ground and, even after 70 years, the particle therapy field continues innovating and improving for the benefits of patients globally. Developing technologies that are both affordable and easy to use is key and would allow access to more patients. Advances in accelerator-driven Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT), image-guided hadron beams delivery, clinical trials and immunotherapy, together with the recent interest and advances in FLASH therapy, which is currently an experimental treatment modality that involves ultrahigh-dose rate delivery, are just a few examples of innovation that may eventually help to provide access to a larger number of patients.

While the required coil geometry for a specified transverse field pattern of straight canted-cosine-theta (CCT) magnets is well known, the same geometry—after the application of a bending transformation—would introduce unwanted field components in a magnet with a strong curvature. In this article, we introduce a coherent framework to define the field quality in curved magnets, and to construct the required 3-D winding geometry of CCT coils, without finite-element software. The method is applicable in general for any magnet configuration where the effective longitudinal current density distribution in the transverse plane can be related to the winding geometry in a unique way. The method is demonstrated on CCT magnet models being developed for the Heavy Ion Therapy Research Integration Plus European H2020 project.

A collaboration between CERN, CNAO, INFN, and MedAustron has been formed aiming at designing a light rotating gantry suitable for hadron therapy based on 430 MeV/n carbon ion beams. After a first design for a 3 T dipole field, as the backbone of the gantry magnetic system, now the collaboration is looking at an alternative design, for at least 4 T field with a faster ramp rate. The magnet is designed according to the cosθ layout to be wound with Nb-Ti superconducting Rutherford cable. One of the main challenges is the very small curvature radius of 1.65 m with a relatively large aperture, of 70-90 mm. Another challenge is the use of indirect cooling despite the cycling operation of 0.4 T/s. The paper reports the preliminary investigation for a 4.5 T dipole. The design will be followed by the construction of a 1 m long demonstrator to be manufactured and tested at INFN (LASA laboratory) in about three years. The conductor is a Rutherford cable of 2.6 µm Nb-Ti filament size, embedded in a Cu-Mn alloy matrix. The resulting gantry is very compact: the collaboration is working on integration between gantry structure and magnets to allow reducing the rotating weight in the range 50-80 tons, which is a factor 4 to 5 less than the present state-of-the-art.

Electron clouds in the beam pipe of high-energy proton or positron storage rings can give rise to significant incoherent emittance growth, at densities far below the coherent-instability threshold. We identify two responsible mechanisms: namely, (1) a beam particle periodically crosses a resonance and (2) a beam particle periodically crosses a region of the bunch where its motion is linearly unstable. Formation of halo or beam-core blow up, respectively, are the result. Key ingredients for both processes are synchrotron motion and electron-induced tune shift. The mechanisms considered provide a possible explanation for reduced beam lifetime and emittance growth observed at several operating accelerators. Similar phenomena are likely to occur in other two-stream systems.

Simulations show a persisting slow emittance growth for electron cloud densities below the threshold of the fast Transverse Mode Coupling type instability, which could prove important for proton beams with negligible radiation damping, such as in the LHC. We report on a variety of studies performed to quantify the contributions to the simulated emittance growth from numerical noise in the PIC module and from an artificial resonance excitation due to the finite number of kicks per turn applied for modeling the cloud-bunch interaction.

Several simulation codes have been adapted so as to model the single-bunch electron-cloud instability including a realistic variation of the optical functions with longitudinal position. In addition, the electron cloud is typically not uniformly distributed around the ring, as frequently assumed, but it is mainly concentrated in certain regions with specific features, e.g., regions which give rise to strong multipacting or suffer from large synchrotron radiation flux. Particularly, electrons in a dipole magnet are forced to follow the vertical field lines and, depending on the bunch intensity, they may populate two vertical stripes, symmetrically located on either side of the beam. In this paper, we present simulation results for the CERN SPS and LHC, which can be compared with measurements or analytical predictions.

In this report we show the simulation results of single-bunch instabilities caused by interaction of a proton beam with an electron cloud for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using the code QuickPIC [1]. We describe three new results: 1) We test the effect of the space charge of the beam on itself; 2) we add the effect of dispersion in the equation of motion in the x direction, and 3) we extend previous modeling by an order of magnitude (from 50ms to 500ms) of beam circulation time. The effect of including space charge is to change the emittance growth by less than a few percent. Including dispersion changes the plane of instability but keeps the total emittance approximately the same. The longer runs indicate that the long term growth of electron cloud instability of the LHC beam cannot be obtained by extrapolating the results of short runs.

The electron cloud may cause transverse single-bunch instabilities of proton beams such as those in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). We simulate these instabilities and the consequent emittance growth with the code HEADTAIL, which models the turn-by-turn interaction between the cloud and the beam. Recently some new features were added to the code, in particular, electric conducting boundary conditions at the chamber wall, transverse feedback, and variable beta functions. The sensitivity to several numerical parameters has been studied by varying the number of interaction points between the bunch and the cloud, the phase advance between them, and the number of macroparticles used to represent the protons and the electrons. We present simulation results for both LHC at injection and SPS with LHC-type beam, for different electron-cloud density levels, chromaticities, and bunch intensities. Two regimes with qualitatively different emittance growth are observed: above the threshold of the transverse mode-coupling (TMC) type of instability there is a rapid blowup of the beam, while below this threshold a slow, long-term, emittance growth remains. The rise time of the TMC instability caused by the electron cloud is compared with results obtained using an equivalent broadband resonator impedance model, demonstrating reasonable agreement.