Heavy Ion High Intensity Upgrade of the GSI UNILAC

For the future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) at Darmstadt the present GSI‐accelerator complex, consisting of the linear accelerator UNILAC and the heavy ion synchrotron SIS 18, is foreseen to serve as U28+‐injector for up to 1012 particles/s. After a new High Current Injector (HSI) was installed, many different ion species were accelerated in the UNILAC for physics experiments. In 2001 a high energy physics experiment used up to 2⋅109 uranium ions per SIS 18‐spill (U73+) while a MEVVA ion source was in routine operation for the first time. In the past two years, different hardware measures and careful fine tuning in all sections of the UNILAC resulted in an increase of the beam intensity to 9.5⋅1010 U27+‐ions per 100 μs or 1.5⋅1010 U73+‐ions per 100 μs. The contribution reports results of beam measurements during the high current operation with argon and uranium beams (pulse beam power up to 0.5 MW). One of the major tasks was to optimize the beam matching to the Alvarez‐DTL. In addition...