Completion of the commissioning of the superconducting heavy ion injector PIAVE at INFN-LNL

At INFN-LNL the commissioning of the injector PIAVE, based on superconducting (SC) RFQs, has been completed. All the superconducting cavities (two RFQs and 8 quarter wave resonators – QWR) have shown very satisfactory stability with respect to changes of the liquid helium pressure and to microphonics. Beam parameters are very close to the nominal values. The commissioning was completed by accelerating the pilot beam 16 O 3+ with the PIAVE injector and the booster linac ALPI (summer 2005). Since December 2005, a number of test beams were accelerated (mainly noble gas species) with PIAVE and ALPI and delivered to user experimental stations. Regular operation will be scheduled from fall 2006 onwards.