Study of coil configuration and local optics effects for the GaToroid ion gantry design

Abstract

Abstract GaToroid, a novel gantry configuration for hadron therapy, is based on superconducting coils that generate a toroidal magnetic field to deliver the beam to the tumour location. Designing the complex GaToroid coils requires careful consideration of the local beam optical effects. We present a Python-based tool for charged particle transport in complex electromagnetic fields. The code implements fast tracking in arbitrary three-dimensional field maps, and it does not require a definition of specific or regular reference trajectories, as is generally the case for accelerator physics codes. The tool was used to characterise the beam behaviour inside the GaToroid system: to automatically determine the reference trajectories in the symmetry plane and analyse three-dimensional beam dynamics around these trajectories. Beam optical parameters in the field region were compared for various magnetic configurations of GaToroid. This paper introduces the new tracker and shows the benchmarking results. Furthermore, first-order beam optics studies for different arrangements demonstrate the main code features and serve for the design optimisation.