PIAVE the Legnaro New Positive Ion Injector Based on Superconducting RFQs

The construction of a positive ion injector for the linac ALPI, named PIAVE, at Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro started in 1996 and the commissioning with beam on target is scheduled for the second half of 2001. The injector consists of two Superconducting Radio Frequency Quadrupole accelerators (SRFQ) and eight Superconducting Quarter Wave Resonators (QWR). The equivalent accelerating voltage of the machine is of about 8 MV and the design ion beam is U. The SRFQ resonators, as well as the QWR’s, are made of niobium sheets formed and electron beam welded and a particular care has been put in the mechanical design of the structure to avoid low frequency mechanical modes. The paper presents the status of the project describing: the novelties related to the SRFQ design to fulfil the radio frequency and the beam dynamics requirements: the first results of the low energy beam transport commissioning; the experimental performances of the SRFQ2 resonator; the full set of measured performance of the QWR’s.