Improvement of beam emittance of the CEA high intensity proton source SILHI

The emittance of the intense proton beam extracted by the source SILHI at Commisariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA)-Saclay is a key parameter for the design of the IPHI Project RFQ. This parameter has a relevant role even for the design of an intense proton source for the TRASCO project of Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). The tests performed in the framework of CEA-INFN collaboration have been mainly devoted to a 75 mA beam emittance investigation injecting different gases in the beam line. The results show that the rms normalized emittance decreases up to a factor 3 while the beam losses induced by recombination are contained within 5%. Normalized emittance in r-r′ plane of about 0.1 π min mrad have been obtained using Ar and Kr.