INTENSITY UPGRADE PROGRAMME FOR THE HIT INJECTOR LINAC

The Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Centre (HIT) is a worldwide unique radiation therapy facility and the first in-stallation of its kind in Europe. It is equipped with three treatment rooms and has the potential to irradiate over 1000 patients per year. To guarantee a time-saving quality assur-ance and to be well prepared for future clinical require-ments the currently limited beam intensity (ions per sec-ond) should be increased. In an endeavour to provide op-timum conditions for the patient treatment an intensity up-grade programme for the injector linac has been initiated. It affects primarily the Radio-Frequency-Quadrupole (RFQ) but also other linac components. The largest influence on the linac transmission is expected by a new RFQ design with optimised electrodes, which will be soon commis-sioned on a test bench. The update programme is accompa-nied by machine studies. First improvements are presented and the status of the programme is given