Development of RFQ particle dynamics simulation tools and validation with beam tests

Two different strategies of designing RFQs have been introduced. The analytic description of the electric fields inside the quadrupole channel has been derived and the two term simplification was shown as well as the limitation of these approaches. The main work of this thesis was the implementation and analysis of a multigrid Poisson solver to describe the potential and electric field of RFQs which are needed to simulate the particle dynamics accurately. The main two ingredients of a multigrid Poisson solver are the ability of a Gauss-Seidel iteration method to smooth the error of an approximation within a few iteration steps and the coarse grid principle. The smoothing corresponds to a damping of the high frequency components of the error. After the smoothing, the error term can well be approximated on a coarser grid in which the low frequency components of the error on the fine grid are converted to high frequency errors on the coarse grid which can be damped further with the same Gauss-Seidel method. After implementation, the multigrid Poisson solver was analyzed using two different type of test problems: with and without a charge density. As a charge density, a homogeneously charged ball and cylinder were used to represent the bunched and unbunched beam and placed inside a quadruple channel. The solver showed a good performance. Next, the performance of the solver to calculate the external potentials (and fields) of RFQs was analyzed. Closing the analysis of the external field, the transmission and fraction of accelerated particles of the set of 12 RFQs for the two different methods were shown. In the last chapter of this thesis some experimental work on the MAFF (Munich Accelerator for Fission Fragments) IH-RFQ is described. The MAFF RFQ was designed to accelerate very neutron-rich fission fragments for various experiments. The machine was assembled in Frankfurt and a beam test stand was built. As a part of this thesis the shunt impedance of the structure was measured using different techniques, the output energy of the structure were measured and finally its transmission was determined and compared to the beam dynamics simulations of the RFQ. (orig.)