A Linac Afterburner is proposed to raise the energy of the beam injected into the Femrilab Booster from 400 MeV to about 600 MeV, thereby alleviating the longitudinal and transverse space-charge effects at low energy that currently limit its performance. The primary motivation is to increase the integrated luminosity of the Tevatron Collider in Run II, but other future programs would also recap substantial benefits. The estimated cost is $23M.

The 20th ICFA Advanced Beam Dynamics Workshop took place from April 8 to 12, 2002 at Fermilab, co-sponsored by Fermilab and KEK. The theme of this workshop was "High Intensity and High Brightness Hadron Beams". The workshop covered a broad range of topics associated with such beams, including reviews of the performance of existing high-intensity hadron machines, overviews of planned high-intensity hadron sources and projects, presentations on accelerator physics issues, technical systems designs, and applications of these beams in high energy physics, nuclear physics, heavy ion fusion, medicine, industry, and other fields.

In synchrotron machines, the beam extraction is accomplished by a combination of septa and kicker magnets which deflect the beam from an accelerator into another. Ideally the kicker field must rise/fall in between the beam bunches. However, in reality, an intentional beam-free time region (aka "notch") is created on the beam pulse to assure that the beam can be extracted with minimal losses. In the case of the Fermilab Booster, the notch is created in the ring near injection energy by the use of fast kickers which deposit the beam in a shielded collimation region within the accelerator tunnel. With increasing beam power it is desirable to create this notch at the lowest possible energy to minimize activation. The Fermilab Proton Improvement Plan (PIP) initiated an R & D project to build a laser system to create the notch within a linac beam pulse at 750 keV. This talk will describe the concept for the laser notcher and discuss our current status, commissioning results, and future plans.

A report on the challenges confronting the Fermilab Linac and Booster accelerators is presented. Plans to face those challenges are discussed. Historically, the Linac/Booster system has served only as an injector for the relatively low repetition rate Main Ring synchrotron. With construction of an 8 GeV target station for the 5 Hz MiniBooNE neutrino beam and requirements for rapid multi-batch injection into the Main Injector for the NUMI/MINOS experiment, the demand for 8 GeV protons will increase more than an order of magnitude above recent high levels. To meet this challenge, enhanced ion source performance, better Booster orbit control, a beam loss collimation/localization system, and improved diagnostics are among the items being pursued. Booster beam loss reduction and control are key to the entire near future Fermilab high energy physics program.

The Fermilab Linac Upgrade Project is motivated by the requirement to increase Collider luminosity which will increase the physics discovery potential of the Tevatron Collider. The Linac Upgrade is one of several steps which will increase the Collider luminosity. The basic accelerator physics motivation for the project is the following chain of logic. The existing Main Ring Accelerator has a fixed, relatively small admittance for 8 GeV protons injected from the Booster Accelerator. While it is demonstrably p088ible to increase the number of protons accelerated in the Booster, space charge effects at injection into the Booster from the Linac increase the emittance of the beam delivered from the Booster to the Main Ring beyond the available admittance of the Main Ring. An increase in the energy of the protons injected into the Booster, however, will reduce the emittance growth due to the space charge effects at injection. Therefore, for a given admittance into the Main Ring, a greater number of protons will be accelerated in the Booster with a matching emittance if the injection energy is raised. The goal of the Linac Upgrade is to double the output energy of the Linac from 200MeV to 400MeV.

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It is difficult to believe that our planet has been weaponized before our very eyes, but that is exactly what has happened. First, we were seduced by the convenience of a wireless world; then, atmospheric weather experimentation in the guise of carbons “climate change” converted the air we breathe into an antenna. Now, the geo-engineering we’ve been subjected to for two decades is being normalized as the “Star Wars” Space Fence rises around and within us. Is this the Space Age we were promised?