Advanced RF-KO slow-extraction method for the reduction of spill ripple

Two advanced RF-knockout (RF-KO) slow-extraction methods have been developed at HIMAC in order to reduce the spill ripple for accurate heavy-ion cancer therapy: the dual frequency modulation (FM) method and the separated function method. As a result of simulations and experiments, it was verified that the spill ripple could be considerably reduced using these advanced methods, compared with the ordinary RF-KO method. The dual FM method and the separated function method bring about a low spill ripple within standard deviations of around 25% and of 15% during beam extraction within around 2 s, respectively, which are in good agreement with the simulation results. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.