Fission nuclear energy is an important part of the available energy in the world. However, the nuclear waste treatment is major obstacle for the development of fission energy. Accelerator-driven subcritical systems (ADS) is considered to be the most effective and promising method to solve this issue. However, extremely high beam power and high operating stability are required for the accelerator of ADS system, which are hot topics and the most urgent tasks in the community. At the same time, high-current and high-power accelerators are also important tools for solving major scientific problems and important national economic issues. The Linac Center is currently engaged in the research and development of key technologies for high-current & high-power superconducting linear accelerators for the applications in ADS and other major scientific facilities.

As a large-scale scientific facility, the superconducting linac is a very complicated and highly organized system. It involves almost all the engineering disciplines. Therefore, effective cooperation and integration among the majors and disciplines are critical. By dividing the whole accelerator system into detailed components with specific function, thereby, we set up six groups in linac center to take the responsibility for beam dynamics design, RF cavity fabrication, RF surface treatment, power and low-level RF system, instrumentation & control, and cryogenic engineering, respectively. Now, our center contains 110 members, including 79 staffs and 31 graduate students. Among the staffs, there are 27 with doctoral degree, 34 with senior-titled position, 30 graduate student advisers, 1 "NSFC Outstanding Youth Funding receiver" and 1 awarded with "Ten Thousand Plan". 

Since 2011, we have achieved great progresses in developing superconducting linac technology. The world’s first proton SC linac demo facility operated in CW mode was commissioned by us in 2017. At present, this demo facility can provide intense proton or helium ion beams for scientific research including material irradiation, isotope synthesis, high-power targets and machine study. So far, we have been awarded and completed more than 20 projects with total budget above 500 million yuan from the NSFC and CAS, such as ADS injector, CMIF, LEAF, etc. In the next five years, We will mainly focus on the construction of the driving linacs of CiADS and HIAF that located in Huizhou, Guangdong province.  

We have unique advantages in the R&D of SC linac and talents cultivation. Several cutting-edge research platforms for SRF technology and application have been established, including post processing & clean technology, microwave instrumentation & test systems, and cryogenic station. At the same time, out design team has purchased more than 10 kinds of industrial design software, including ANSYS, CST, Vsim, SolidWorks, and TraceWin, for the calculation and design in mechanics, microwave, plasma, and beam dynamics. 

In the future, our main targets will be improving the stability of accelerators, developing high-stability accelerator components, identifying key parameters that affect the stability, and optimization of accelerator engineering. We also devote ourselves to a number of fundamental research topics in the SRF community: non-linear physics of the intense beams will be studied to predict and suppress beam loss; developing the online performance recovery technology will increase machine availability; high-performance superconducting thin-film materials will open the gate to the future SRF technology, and the study of RF loss mechanism on the superconducting surface can improve the performance and stability of future SC linacs. 

In summary, a high power superconducting linac operating in cw mode is a worldwide challenge. If you are interested in our subjects and have a background in relevant majors, please do not hesitate to contact us. We have openings for Ph. D students with scholarship, postdoctoral fellows and special research assistants with CAS stipend. You are more than welcomed to join us and let’s take the challenges together to realize the dream of green nuclear power for human’s future.