BERLinPro - Berlin Energy Recovery Linac Project

ERLs hold the promise of becoming the future backbone of the modern accelerator facilities, satisfying the needs of the user community in applied science and fundamental research.

They combine the efficiency advantage of storage rings with the improved beam quality achievable in a linac. The next-generation accelerator facilities must circumvent the equilibrium beam properties of a storage ring, i.e., the beam must be discarded before the equilibrium is established. A single-pass linear accelerator (linac) represents the most extreme example of such a device. Provided one takes care not to disrupt the beam, it maintains the properties generated in the electron source, with the emittance being damped adiabatically by a factor inversely proportional to the beam energy. Ultra-low emittances are thus attainable provided the electron source produces a beam of suitable quality. Even with present-day injectors, emittances less than 100 pm rad (at a few GeV) are possible.

Superconducting RF (SRF) cavities are the enabling technology that allows Continuous Wave (CW) ERLs to implement energy recovery without storing the beam. ERLs thus combine two important properties: High-brightness electron beam and high-power electron beam capabilities. As such, it has the potential to be applied to a large number of uses, notably particle collider, compact Compton sources and the next generation of synchrotron light sources. ERLs provide radiation with characteristics that cannot be matched by third-generation storage rings:

· Average brilliance two to three orders of magnitude higher

· Pulse lengths that are at least two orders of magnitude shorter (some 10 fs)

· Significantly higher coherence fraction

· Great flexibility to tune the beam properties and repetition rate to the user requirements.

· And critically, ERLs can generate a wide spectrum of radiation for a true multiuser facility.

BERLinPro

For ERLs, the demands placed on the electron source, the SRF linac, and the beam transport are severe due to the required extreme beam quality, high current and the CW operation. Ultimately, the technology and concepts have to be put to the test in an ERL test facility. To this end, HZB is proposing to build BERLinPro.

BERLinPro is designed to develop and to demonstrate the CW LINAC technology and expertise required to drive next-generation accelerator facilities that are based on ERL principle.

Stage 1 - Injector and Booster

In an ERL, electrons must be grouped in small bunches, such that they appear from the outside as one particle radiating. Therfore electrons must be created right from the start in the form of small, short bunches, dense clouds. This can be achieved by using a superconducting radio-frequency photoinjector.

Stage 2 - Merging Section

Stage 3 - Linac

Current studies on the parameters of a superconducting linac are integrated within the HoBiCaT-Project.

Stage 4 - Energy Recovery

That's the future!

Meetings and Seminars