High-power proton linac technology at CERN

The construction of Linac4, a 160 MeV H^- linac started in 2008 and is now in the beam commissioning phase. The RFQ and MEBT line have been successfully commissioned; and installation and beam measurements of the 50 MeV DTL have started in 2014. Linac4 was conceived as the normal conducting front-end for a Superconducting Proton Linac (SPL), providing 5 GeV protons for a future neutrino facility at CERN. In the last 2 years the CERN infrastructure for the construction, surface treatment and testing of superconducting cavities has been upgraded to be compatible with the prototyping of a 4-cavity SPL type cryomodule. The 704 MHz 5-cell Niobium cavities, presently being built and tested at CERN are of interest also for other potential future projects at CERN and therefore the SPL R and D effort is well supported over the coming years. This paper reviews the context and status of Linac4 and SPL and highlights some of the technological developments, which have been done at CERN and which are foreseen within the next years. (author)