First acceleration of heavy ion beams with a superconducting continuous wave HIM/GSI CW-linac

In the future a new superconducting (sc) continuous wave (cw) high intensity heavy ion Linac should provide ion beams with a max. beam energy above the coulomb barrier for the Super Heavy Element (SHE) program at GSI Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung. Key features of this new Linac are the acceleration of different ions from protons to uranium as well as a smooth energy variation from 3.5 to 7.3 MeV/u for design ions with a mass-to-charge ratio A/q = 6 and even above for lighter ions. As a first step a newly developed superconducting 15-gap Crossbar H-cavity (CH-cavity) operated at 217 MHz has been successfully tested with heavy ion beam up to the design beam energy of 1.85 MeV/u for the first time. The design energy gain of 3.5 MV within a length of less than 70 cm has been validated with heavy ion beams of up to 1.5 p mu A. The measured beam parameters showed excellent beam quality, while a dedicated beam dynamics layout provides beam energy variation between 1.2 and 2.2 MeV/u. The beam commissioning is a milestone of the R&D work of Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) and GSI in collaboration with Goethe University Frankfurt (GUF) and the first step towards a sc heavy ion cw-Linac with variable beam energy. The first tests under cryogenic conditions of the next two CH-cavities have already been started at GUF in a vertical cryostat. The results of the first successful heavy ion beam acceleration with a superconducting CH-cavity will be presented.