UNILAC Upgrade for FAIR and Beyond

Abstract:  The more than 40 years old GSI-UNILAC (Universal Linear Accelerator) as well as the heavy ion synchrotron SIS18 will serve as a high current heavy ion injector for the new FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) synchrotron SIS100. An UNILAC-upgrade program will be realized until FAIR commissioning starts, providing for the high heavy ion beam currents as required for this project. Among other upgrade measures a new ion source terminal and a low energy beam line are dedicated to increase the primary low charge uranium beam intensity. In the context of an advanced machine investigation program in combination with the ongoing UNILAC upgrade program, a new uranium beam intensity record (11.5 emA, U29+) at very high beam brilliance was achieved recently in a machine experiment campaign. This is an important step paving the way to fulfill the FAIR heavy ion high intensity beam requirements. The replacement of the poststripper-DTL is advised to provide a stable operation for the next decades. Recently an ALVAREZ- and an IH-type DTL-design are under investigation. FAIR commissioning has to be accomplished after 2022. As shown in machine experiments, UNILAC can serve also as a high current FAIR proton injector for the first time. Pushing the proton intensities to the required limit a new FAIR proton linac has to be build. Besides, a dedicated superconducting heavy ion cw-linac is planned to build, serving experiments independently with beam energies up to 7.5 MeV/u. The basic ideas and the recent status of the FAIR upgrade program and an outlook will be presented.