Comparative study of beam dynamics in LINAC4 using cern and ral mebt (medium energy beam transport) lines

CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and RAL (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) are working in parallel to develop Front Ends for future particle accelerators. At CERN the Front End will be part of LINAC4 [1], a potential replacement for the LINAC2 accelerator, whilst at RAL the Front End is intended to demonstrate that a high current, high quality chopped beam is achievable [2] and that the design could be used as part of a Proton Driver for a future Neutrino Factory. The two Front End designs have many similarities and basically consist of four main components: an H ion source, a Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) matching into a Radio-Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) and a Medium Energy Beam Transport (MEBT) line with a fast beam chopper. The beam choppers are different in the two designs and it is important to compare the effectiveness of the two methods of operation. This paper describes a simulation study of high intensity beam dynamics and beam transport when the RAL and CERN MEBT designs are each fed into the same CERN structure for LINAC4.