Acceleration of lead ions in the CERN PS Booster and the CERN PS

The new CERN Heavy-Ion Accelerating Facility implies besides a new linac also important modifications of existing accelerators. They are imposed by the low speed and the low intensity of the ion beam and, crucially at low energy, by the short lifetime of the partially stripped ions due to charge exchange with the atoms of the residual gas. Once the optimum charge state (Pb/sup 53+/) and energy of the injector (4.2 MeV/u) had been chosen, the operational pulse-to-pulse variability (PPM) of particle species and intensities in the PS and its four-ring Booster (PSB) dictate the main beam parameters.