Fixed-Field Alternating-Gradient Accelerators

TL;DR

This paper reviews Fixed-Field Alternating-Gradient (FFAG) accelerators, focusing on their principles, types, beam dynamics, and potential applications in medical hadron therapy, including design options for treatment gantries.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of FFAG accelerators specifically for medical applications, highlighting recent developments and design considerations.

Findings

FFAG accelerators are promising for medical hadron therapy.

Existing medical FFAG designs demonstrate practical feasibility.

Design options for FFAG treatment gantries are explored.

Abstract

These notes provide an overview of Fixed-Field Alternating-Gradient (FFAG) accelerators for medical applications. We begin with a review of the basic principles of this type of accelerator, including the scaling and non-scaling types, highlighting beam dynamics issues that are of relevance to hadron ac- celerators. The potential of FFAG accelerators in the field of hadron therapy is discussed in detail, including an overview of existing medical FFAG designs. The options for FFAG treatment gantries are also considered.