Possible application of an EBIS in preinjectors for large heavy ion colliders

摘要

High energy, heavy ion nuclear physics has so far been limited to experiments with a fixed target. Presently there are two projects that would greatly extend the available collision energy: the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) planned at CERN. While RHIC was from the very beginning designed for collisions of all heavy ions up to gold, LHC was initially considered as a p-p and, perhaps eventually, an e-p collider, with the heavy ion option added at a later stage; this option is now included in the planning right from the beginning. The present RHIC scenario for acceleration of gold ions starts with the BNL Tandem injecting Au(sup 14+) ions into the Booster; after acceleration ions are stripped to a charge state of 77+, injected into the AGS, stripped again to 79+ and injected into RHIC, with three bunches per cycle. The LHC scenario for acceleration of lead ions will use as the injector the CERN Heavy Ion Facility: production of ions in a charge state around 27+ in an ECR ion source, followed by an RFQ/linac combination, stripping to Pb(sup 53+) at 4.2 MeV/u, acceleration in the PSB and PS, stripping to the state 82+, and acceleration in the SPS. There would be 144 bunches injected into the LHC per SPS cycle. However, the resulting luminosity would be rather low and several accumulating schemes are being considered as well. In this paper we are considering a next-generation EBIS device as a possible substitution for ion sources in the preinjector stages of the two colliders with the objective of achieving an improved performance.