The SNS Front-End Systems Team represents Berkeley Lab as one of the six participating US Laboratories involved in building the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), a national user facility for the neutron scattering community that is currently under construction at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Front-End Systems will deliver an intense, pulsed H- ion beam of 2.5-MeV energy to the SNS Linear Accelerator (Linac). The main beamline systems of the front end include an H- Ion Source, a Low-Energy Beam-Transport system (LEBT), a Radio-Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) accelerator, and a Medium-Energy Beam-Transport system (MEBT). Critical issues for the FES design were the current and brightness of the ion beam; its time structure, with pulse rise/fall times of 10 ns; the lifetime and reliability of the ion source; operation of the RFQ at 6% duty factor; and a MEBT chopper target capable of withstanding very high instantaneous power densities.

By July 15, 2002, the SNS Front End Systems had been built and commissioned at Berkeley Lab, and delivered to the SNS construction site at Oak Ridge. This work was completed on schedule and within budget, with system performance that meets or exceeds all major beam-parameter requirements. The SNS Front End can be seen as the prototype of a generic Linac Injector for so-called proton-driver accelerators that are being planned worldwide for various purposes in high-energy physics, and other scientific disciplines.

After the completion of the FES construction project, part of the team has stayed together and presently works on two aspects of SNS-related accelerator technology, i.e., Low-Level Radio Frequency control systems and H- Ion-Source development.

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