EXTRACTION AND DIAGNOSTIC LINES FOR A LINAC-BASED CARBON ION MEDICAL FACILITY

In the continuous pursuit of combating cancer, the field of medical physics stands at the forefront of innovation, continually seeking novel methodologies to enhance treatment efficacy while minimizing collateral damage to healthy tissues. Carbon ion therapy has emerged as a promising frontier, offering unparalleled precision and biological effectiveness in targeting cancers, deeply penetrating tissues and concentrating energy at the tumor site while sparing surrounding tissues. Linear accelerators (linacs) represent the latest technology proposed in the field of hadron therapy, capable of producing high quality, pulsed beams at high repetition rates. The application of linacs to carbon ion therapy could improve its reliability, efficiency, and compactness. Although a complete carbon ion linac is still conceptual, a carbon ion pre-injector is under construction at CERN to demonstrate the feasibility of producing a beam suitable for medical applications, in terms of beam quality and current. The main topic of this thesis work is the design of an innovative source extraction system for the carbon ion pre-injector, which allows to directly match the beam from the source to the adjacent accelerating structure. The transition from the source to the accelerator is therefore as compact as possible to reach a better performance of the accelerator in terms of brilliance and beam quality, but also to improve the aspect ratio of the linac footprint and to facilitate the operation and reproducibility of the system. The ELISA experiment (Experimental LInac for Surface Analysis) represents an essential test bed of the studies in the thesis. The ELISA source commissioning allows to study the characterization of the source and to optimize the parameters of the extraction system, leading to a knowledge and expertise that can be exploited to improve the performance of the carbon ion pre-injector. The design of a diagnostic test bench for the carbon ion pre-injector is also part of this thesis work, with the aim to validate the performance of the first accelerating cavity with beam measurements and to test the reliability of the first part of the pre-injector.