ESS SC linac design overview

The ESS project (European Spallation Source) aims to produce high power beams for condensed matter studies. One option consists in having both H+ and H- beams. They have to be accelerated and guided to the different spallation targets. Beam power up to 5 MW at 50 Hz plus 5 MW at 16.2/3 Hz, will be delivered on respectively the Short Pulse Target Station and the Long Pulse Target Station. Two 50 mA H- branches are funnelled with one 100 mA H+ beam at around 20 MeV. A chopper line between two RFQs and DTLs constitutes the H- front end. The H+ front end is composed of one RFQ and one DTL. After the funnel, the two species are transported through the same linac up to 1.334 GeV. This common part is composed of a SDTL and a CCL from 20 to 185 MeV and followed by a SuperConducting Linac (SCL) to reach the final energy. Up to recently (ESS Volume III 1996), a NC version of the linac had been extensively studied and constituted the reference option. However, given the fantastic progresses made on SC technology and the many potential advantages, a SC alternative was developed. We concentrate on this option