The 2017 Xe run at CERN Linac3: measurements and beam dynamics simulations

At CERN quark-gluon plasma and fixed target ion experiments are performed thanks to the Heavy-ion Facility, composed by different accelerators. The starting point is CERN Linac3, which delivers 4.2 MeV/u ion beams to the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR). In 2017 Linac3 accelerated Xe instead of the most usual Pb. Machine development (MD) time was allocated to adapt the accelerator to the new ion species. This article summarizes the measurements performed during the MD time allocated to characterize the line from the source to the filtering section. A parallel effort was devoted to match those measurements to the beam dynamics simulations, and the second part of the article highlights the results achieved in this regard. Thanks to the improved understanding of the machine critical areas, a list of possible improvements is proposed at the end.