PILAC: A pion linac facility for 1-GeV pion physics at LAMPF

Abstract

A design study for a Pion Linac (PILAC) at LAMPF is under way at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The reference design for a system of pion source, linac, and high-resolution beam line and spectrometer that will provide 109 pions/s on target and 200-keV resolution for the (π+, K+) reaction at 0.92 GeV is presented. A general-purpose beam line that delivers both positive and negative pions in the energy range of 0.4-1.1 GeV is included, thus opening up the possibility of a broad experimental program. A kicker-based beam sharing system allows delivery of beam to both beam lines simultaneously with independent sign and energy control. Because the pion linac acts like an RF particle separator, all beams produced by PILAC will be free of electron (or positron) and proton contamination.