Benedetti, S. Bellodi, G. Lallement, J.-B. Lombardi, A.M. JACoW Publishing Geneva, Switzerland 2226-0366 978-3-95450-194-6 10.18429/JACoW-LINAC2018-THPO057 English 818-821 THPO057 rfq linac emittance cavity simulation Contribution to a conference proceedings 2019 2019-01 https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-LINAC2018-THPO057 http://jacow.org/linac2018/papers/thpo057.pdf CERN Linac3 is at the start of the CERN Heavy Ion Facility, providing 4.2 MeV/u ion beams to the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR). It mostly accelerates 208Pb²⁹⁺, though in recent years runs were performed with 40Ar¹¹⁺ and 129Xe²²⁺, in view of the increasing interest of the physics community towards lighter ions experiments. In the framework of the LHC Injectors Upgrade (LIU) project, measurements and beam dynamics simulations showed that a transmission bottleneck of Linac3 is represented by the RFQ. As this accelerator was originally designed for 208Pb²⁵⁺, the lower beam rigidity of the heavy ions currently in use and planned for the future permits a redesign of the RFQ optics aimed at increasing its transverse acceptance, and thus the transmitted beam current. A study of this has been performed, and the methodology adopted and the results are presented.