Linac4: Reliability run results and source extraction studies

Linac4, a 160 MeV, 352.2 MHz linear accelerator, has been fully commissioned and will take its place as injector to the CERN chain of accelerators during the long shutdown (LS2) in 2019-2020. In the past year, it has been providing beam during a test run to assess its reliability in view of the connection to the LHC proton injector chain. A target reliability of more than 90 % has been demonstrated during the accumulated nine months of run in 2017 and 2018. The beam quality at 160 MeV is suitable for producing all beams for the CERN physics program of today. Nevertheless, the limited peak current of 30 mA might be a limitation for future high intensity programs. The bottleneck has been identified at the low energy end of the accelerator. Meanwhile, beam extraction and low-energy beam transport studies are ongoing at a dedicated test stand with the goal to reach beam currents from the pre-injector up to 45 mA. We will present the status of the extraction modelling and possible solutions to reach higher beam currents from the RFQ along with results from the reliability run.