The Medium Energy Beam Transport, sector of the accelerator that goes between RFQ and DTL has been delivered at ESS site in Lund successfully. Designed and manufactured by our ESS Bilbao team is one of the keys committed In-Kind contributions from Spain to the European Spallation Source ERIC. More than 20 high qualified people, include physics and engineers, had made this important project a reality, for 8 years working, from the very beginning during the design phase until the manufacturing and testing in ESS Bilbao test stand in Zamudio.

The MEBT operates with a proton beam of 3.6 MeV and currents of 62.5 mA and nominal pulses of 2.8 ms. The MEBT is 3.81 m length for the integration of the different components. The MEBT components are installed on their dedicated vacuum vessels, which are placed over the support rafts. A set of 11 quadrupoles is used to match the transversal beam characteristics and three RF buncher cavities to fulfil the longitudinal parameters. The beam pulse is shaped using a stripline fast chopper with rise times of less than 10 ns. The beam characterization is done with a complete set of diagnostics: wire scanner, Emittance Meter Unit, Faraday Cup, BPMs, BCMs…).

This key component of the ESS accelerator matches the RFQ output beam characteristics to the DTL input, using quadrupoles, longitudinally RF buncher cavities and pulse shaping with the Fast Chopper. Also, adequate the beam characterization using a comprehensive set of diagnostics. And finally does the control development and integration in the ESS EPICS environment. The cost of this In-Kind project is around 4M€.

The ESS Bilbao team is already in Lund for the delivery and the installation of the MEBT at ESS Acelerator Tunnel during the coming weeks.