Beam emittance measurements and simulations of injector line for radio frequency quadrupole

A 400 keV deuteron (D+) radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) accelerator has been designed, built, and commissioned at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India. A beam line has been developed for injecting deuterons into the 400 keV RFQ. This comprises of a RF plasma ion source and a low energy beam transport (LEBT) system, consisting of two solenoid magnets and two steerer magnets. The ion source is characterized in terms of transverse beam emittance. A slit-wire scanner based emittance measurement setup has been developed for the transverse emittance measurements of H+ and D+ beams. The measured emittance values are found to be well within the acceptance value for the RFQ. These measured emittance parameters are used to optimize the solenoid fields in LEBT to match the beam from the ion source to RFQ. TRACEWIN simulation code is used for the beam transport simulations. The simulations show 99% transmission of D+ beam through the RFQ, while 95% transmission has been measured experimentally. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.