The Isotope Decay-At-Rest experiment (IsoDAR) is a proposed underground experiment which is expected to be a definitive search for sterile neutrinos. In order to be decisive within 5 years, high rates of neutrinos must be produced, by
impinging a 10 mA continuous wave proton beam at 60 MeV on a high power target.
Due to space restrictions, a compact cyclotron was chosen as an accelerator to produce
this driver beam.
To overcome space charge limitations during injection, H2
+ ions are accelerated and
later stripped into protons by means of a carbon foil.
IsoDAR uses an especially designed low-frequency (32.8 MHz) split-coaxial Radio-Frequency
Quadrupole (RFQ) to effectively bunch H2
+ ions before injecting them into this cyclotron.
The RFQ will be embedded vertically in the cyclotron yoke,
facilitating a very compact design. This puts stringent limits on RFQ size, type, and
accessibility.
Here, we present the design and optimization of the low-frequency (32.8 MHz) RF input-coupler
for the IsoDAR RFQ.
The design is challenging due to the necessarily small diameter of the RFQ (28 cm)
and the split-coaxial type, as well as limited access to the RFQ.
We have determined the optimal position and shape for the coupler, leading to a low power
consumption of < 6 kW for an inter-vane voltage of 22 kV. The highest calculated fields
are safely below the Kilpatrick limit for this structure.
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