THE HITRAP DECELERATOR PROJECT AT GSI*

The trap for heavy highly-charged ions (HITRAP) at GSI is a funded project since 2004. Highly charged ions up to U92+ provided by the GSI accelerator facility will be decelerated and subsequently injected into a Penning trap for further cooling almost to rest. A combination of an IH-and an RFQ-structure decelerates the ions from 4 MeV/u down to 6 keV/u. In front of the decelerator a harmonic double drift-buncher provides for phase focusing and a final debuncher integrated in the RFQ-tank reduces the energy spread to improve the efficiency for beam capture in the cooler trap. The report gives an overview of the final beam dynamic design of the entire decelerator. Besides the construction status of the cavities, particular beam diagnostic features due to the short pulses of 1µs and 108 MHz bunch frequency, and concepts for technical and controls integration into the existing GSI accelerator complex are presented. Finally the recent time schedule and considerations for commissioning are described