Acceleration of heavy ions with a new RF system at HIMAC synchrotron

A fast three-dimensional scanning irradiation method is under development at the Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC) as the next stage of heavy ion cancer therapy. This method requires highly accurate control of the beam size, energy, and intensity. To improve the accelerated beam’s quality, a new scheme for the synchrotron RF system has been developed. The new system adopts a periodic time clock system (T-clock) instead of an ordinary B-clock system. The new T-clock system is synchronized with a power line frequency of 50 Hz for synchronization with the synchrotron power supply. An ordinary B-clock system results in error pulses owing to the small analog signal of the magnetic field of the main dipole magnet, and the errors cause dipole oscillation of the beam in the RF bucket. Using the new T-clock generator at 192 kHz, we have observed an improvement in the acceleration efficiency and bunch shape compared to the B-clock generator.