RF System for the NICA Collider

The new NICA (Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAсility) accelerator complex being built at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna, Russia) is intended for experiments with 197Au79+ gold nuclei at energies in the range of 1–4.5 GeV/n. The RF system of the collider should provide the capture of bunches to be injected from the nuclotron, the accumulation of the necessary number of particles, their acceleration (if necessary), and the formation of bunches. For this, in each ring of the collider, three types of accelerating stations are used: one barrier station and two harmonic stations. The barrier station accumulates the particles and can used to accelerate them up to the energy of the experiment. The harmonic RF stations operating at the 22th and 66th harmonics of the revolution frequency are used for the formation of bunches. This paper describes the operating modes of the RF system and the design features of the RF stations.