Developmental studies of high current proton linac for ADS program

One of the main sub-systems of ADS is a high energy (∼1 GeV) and high current (∼30 mA) CW proton linac. It is planned to take a staged approach towards development of the requisite accelerator technology, dividing it into 3 sections: namely, 20 MeV, 100 MeV and 1 GeV. One of the most challenging parts of such a CW proton accelerator is development of the low-energy injector, typically up to 20 MeV, because the space charge effects are maximal at these energies. BARC has initiated the development of Low Energy (20 MeV) High Intensity Proton Accelerator (LEHIPA) as front-end injector of the 1 GeV accelerator for the ADS program. Physics design studies have also been done for a 1 GeV proton linac for our ADS program. Proton beams are accelerated upto 100 MeV using normal conducting and then upto 1 GeV using superconducting elliptical cavities with a gradient of ∼15 MV/m. The overall beam transmission is calculated to be 98%. In this paper, salient features of these studies are discussed. (author)