Beam Commissioning of the Superconducting RFQS of the New LNL Injector Piave

PIAVE is the new injector of the LNL superconducting heavy ion linac ALPI; the injector is able to accelerate ions up to U (A/q=8.5) with a final energy of more than 1 MeV/u. During the last two months of 2004 the superconducting RFQ, composed by two Nb structures operating at 80 MHz, has been commissioned using the O³⁺and Xe¹⁸⁺beams produced by the 14.4 GHz ECRIS Alice. The beam has been accelerated up to 587 keV/u reaching the main design parameters (energy, transverse emittance, transmission) and demonstrating a stable and reproducible operation. This is the first operational beam accelerated by a superconducting RFQ.