Designing self-matching linacs

The present trend in ion-linac design is to begin with a radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) linac followed by one or more drift-tube linac (DTL) tanks in which permanent-magnet quadrupoles are used for transverse focusing. The lack of adjustable elements (knobs) strongly suggests that one should seek linac designs with intertank matching solutions that are insensitive to beam currents and emittances, which can be accomplished if there are no sharp discontinuities in the focusing properties along the entire linac. Guidelines are presented for linac design and describe techniques for longitudinal as well as transverse matching between tanks. For a wide range of beam currents and emittances, a beam matched at the entrance to the RFQ should remain well matched throughout the entire linac