RF Deflector Design for Rapid Proton Therapy

Pencil beam scanning of charged particle beams is a key technology enabling high dose rate cancer therapy. The potential benefits of high-speed dose delivery include not only a reduction in total treatment time and improvements to motion management during treatment but also the possibility of enhanced healthy tissue sparing through the FLASH effect, a promising new treatment modality. We present here the design of an RF deflector operating at 2.856 GHz for the rapid steering of 150 MeV proton beams. The design utilizes a TE11-like mode supported by two posts protruding into a pillbox geometry to form an RF dipole. This configuration provides a significant enhancement to the efficiency of the structure, characterized by a transverse shunt impedance of 68 MOhm/m, as compared to a conventional TM11 deflector. We discuss simulations of the structure performance for several operating configurations including the addition of a permanent magnet quadrupole to amplify the RF-driven deflection. In addition to simulation studies, we will present preliminary results from a 3-cell prototype fabricated using four copper slabs to accommodate the non-axially symmetric cell geometry.
Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil