Commissioning and Operation of the MedAustron Injector: Results and Future Outlook

The MedAustron facility is a synchrotron-driven hadron therapy and research center presently under construction in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. In its final outline, the facility will provide H⁺ beams with kinetic energies ≤250MeV and C6+ beams of ≤400MeV/u for clinical applications, and for non-clinical applications H⁺ of up to 800MeV. First patient treatment is foreseen for the end of 2015. The (H3)+ and C4+ beams are generated at 8keV/u in continuous mode by three ECR ion sources and transported to the RFQ for acceleration to 400keV/u. An inter-tank section matches the beam to the entrance of an IH-mode DTL that accelerates the particles to 7MeV/u before they are stripped to, respectively, H⁺ and C6+, debunched and transported to the injection plane of the synchrotron. At a later stage of the project, beams of other species can be generated with similar optics. This contribution presents the results of the injector commissioning and operation. A comparison with the baseline optics and with the design error studies is given. In addition, an overview on the operational experience is given, with emphasis on the system reliability, stability and reproducibility