Design and Simulation of the IsoDAR RFQ Direct Injection System and Spiral Inflector

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simulation code for optimizing spiral inflector geometry for axial injection into cyclotrons, improving beam focusing and electrode design with high accuracy compared to commercial software.

Contribution

Development of a novel simulation tool that accurately models electric fields and particle trajectories for spiral inflector design and optimization.

Findings

The code produces results comparable to commercial software.

Optimized electrode geometries improve beam focusing.

Shortened electrodes effectively compensate for fringing fields.

Abstract

In this paper we present the development of a simulation code capable of optimizing the geometry of a spiral inflector designed for axial injection into a cyclotron. To do this, an electric field map of the device is generated by utilizing a boundary elements method and then used to track one or more particles. The information from the trajectories is then used to shorten the electrodes of the spiral inflector to adjust for fringing electric fields such that the particles end up on the mid-plane of the cyclotron. This method was also used to analyze the effects of a modified electrode geometry that can focus the beam as it travels through the device. Compared against commercial multiphysics software, the developed code produced similar results within a negligible margin of error attributed to differences in meshing and particle tracking algorithms.