Design of a Superconducting Beam Transport Channel and Beam Dynamics for a Strong-Focusing Cyclotron

There is an increasing interest in high power proton accelerators for use as neutron and muon sources, accelerator driven systems (ADS) for nuclear waste transmutation, high energy physics, medical physics, nuclear physics, and medical isotope production. Accelerating high current beams has a number of challenges; including avoiding harmful resonance crossing, space charge effects and, specific to cyclotrons, sufficient turn separation at injection and extraction. The Accelerator Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University is developing a high-power strong-focusing cyclotron with two main technologies to overcome these challenges. The first is a superconducting RF cavity to provide the energy gain required for fully separated turns. The second is the use of superconducting beam transport channels within the sectors of the cyclotron to provide strong-focusing with alternating focusing and defocusing quadrupoles. A method has been developed to find the equilibrium spiral orbit through the cyclotron which maintains isochronicity. The isochronous spiral orbit was then used to perform full linear optics calculations. The strengths of the quadrupoles were adjusted to hold the horizontal and vertical betatron tunes constant per turn to avoid resonance crossing. Particle tracking was performed with a modified MAD-X-PTC code and Synergia to provide a framework for future space charge studies. Magnetic modeling was performed on a 2D cross section of the beam transport channel. The wire locations were adjusted to reduce the higher order multipoles and a good field region was obtained at 70% of the beam pipe aperture with multipoles less than 10^-4. The 2D model was also used to determine the required current density needed to produce the quadrupole gradients. MgB2 superconducting wire was chosen as it meets all the field and current requirements and can operate at a reduced cryogenic cost. A winding mandrel was also designed and fabricated which minimized the bend radius for the superconducting MgB2 wire