FFAG compressor and accelerator ring studied for the German spallation neutron source

For the German spallation neutron source (SNQ), a design of an 1100 MeV proton linac is in progress. The goal of this linac will be a mean current of 5 mA, a repetition rate of 100 Hz and a pulse length of 250 μs. As an alternate to this approach, the authors are checking the feasibility of a circular machine that would be able to compress and to accelerate the beam. This ring would need an injection linac of 350 MeV. The final energy would be variable between 1100 MeV and 1500 MeV. As a design goal, this circular machine would deliver a mean current of 5 mA with a repetition rate of 100 Hz, and the length of the extracted pulse can be chosen between 200 ns and 500 ns. This ring would greatly improve the spectrum of applications of the spallation source, especially in the fields of neutrino-, muon- and epithermal-neutron research