Medium power 352 MHz solid state pulsed RF amplifiers for the CERN linac4 project

International audience

High gradient tests of an 88 MHz RF cavity for muon cooling

The scheme for a Muon Cooling channel developed at CERN in the frame of Neutrino Factory studies foresees the use of 44 and 88 MHz cavities operating at a real-estate gradient as high as 4 MV/m. To assess the feasibility of this scheme, including high-gradient operation at relatively low frequency and the production and handling of high RF peak powers, a test stand was assembled at CERN. It included an 88 MHz resonator reconstructed from a 114 MHz cavity previously used for lepton acceleration in the PS, a 2.5 MW final amplifier made out of an old linac unit improved and down-scaled in frequency, and a PS spare amplifier used as driver stage. After only 160 hours of conditioning the cavity passed the 4 MV/m level, with local peak surface field in the gap exceeding 25 MV/m (2.4 times the Kilpatrick limit). The gradient was limited by the amplifier power, the maximum RF peak output power achieved during the tests being 2.65 MW. This paper presents the results of the tests, including an analysis of field emission from the test cavity, and compares the results with the experience in conditioning ion linac RF cavities at CERN

Automatic conditioning of the CTF3 RF system

The RF system of CTF3 (CLIC Test Facility 3) includes ten 35 MW to 40 MW 3 GHz klystrons and one 20 MW 1.5 GHz klystron. High power RF conditioning of the waveguide network and cavities connected to each klystron can be extremely time consuming. Because of this, a fully automatic conditioning system has been developed within a CERN JINR (Dubna) collaboration. It involves relatively minor hardware additions, most of the work being in application and front-end software. The system has already been used very successfully

CERN LINAC4 H- Source and SPL plasma generator RF systems, RF power coupling and impedance measurements

In the LINAC4 H- source and the SPL plasma generator at CERN, the plasma is heated by a 100 kW, 2 MHz RF system. Matching of the load impedance to the final amplifier is achieved with a resonant network. The system implements a servo loop for power stabilization and frequency hopping to cope with the detuning effects induced by the plasma. This paper provides a detailed description of the system, including the pulse rate increase to 50 Hz for use in the SPL plasma generator. The performances, measurements of RF power coupling, contribution of the plasma to the impedance as well as first operation are reported

The Linac4 DTL Prototype: Low and High Power Measurements

The prototype of the Linac4 Drift Tube Linac (DTL) has undergone low power measurements in order to verify the RF coupling and to adjust the post-coupler lengths based on bead-pull and spectrum measurements. Following the installation at the test stand, the cavity has been subjected to high power operation at Linac4 and SPL duty cycles. Saturation effects and multipacting have been observed and linked to X-ray emission. Voltage holding is reported in the presence of magnetic fields from permanent magnet quadrupoles (PMQ) installed in the first drift tubes

CCDTL conditioning report: Module 2 and Module 3

Two CCDTL modules for Linac4 have been conditioned at SM18. The modules were tuned for resonance at 352.2 MHz, and stable operation has been achieved with 800 μs RF pulses with a repetition rate of 2 Hz. Maximum power of 700 kW loaded in cells has been achieved with a nominal Linac4 klystron and modulator setup. Since those were the first CCDTL modules to be conditioned, both hardware and software have been developed along with the conditionings