SLAC modulator operation and reliability in the SLC Era

Conference · Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 1992

OSTI ID:7087285

Donaldson, A R; Ashton, J R

A discussion of the operation and reliability of the 244 modulators in the SLAC linac with an emphasis on the past three years of operation. The linac modulators were designed and built in the 60's, upgraded for the SLAC Linear Collider (SLC) in the mid 80s, and despite their age are still reliable accelerator components. The 60s modulator operated at 65 MW peak and 83 kW average power. The upgrade resulted in 150 MW peak output at an average power of 87 kW, a modest increase since the repetition rate was dropped from 360 to 120 Hz. In the present accelerator configuration, the Linac operates as a source of electrons and positrons to a single pass coillider. The classic collider is a storage ring filled with oppositely charged, counter-rotating particles which are allowed to collide until an accelerator fault occurs and the stored beams are aborted. A reasonable storage ring can store and collide particles for as long as eight hours with a 10 or 20 minute filling time. A single pass collider, + on the other hand, can only produce e{sup {minus}} and e{sup +} collisions at whatever rate the source operates. To be effective the SLC must operate at 120 Hz with a very high degree of reliability and on a continuous basis. Fortunately, the linac has a modest excess of modulator/klystron systems which allows some measure of redundancy and hence some freedom from the constraint that all 244 modulator/klystrons operate simultaneously. Nonetheless, high importance is placed on modulator MTBF and MTRR or, in the parlance of reliability experts and accelerator physicists, availability. This is especially true of the modulators associated with the fundamental requirements of a collider such as injection, compression and positron production.

• Research Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 7087285
• Report Number(s): SLAC-PUB-5863; CONF-920671-10; ON: DE92019650
• Resource Relation: Conference: 20. international power modulator symposium, Myrtle Beach, SC (United States), 23-25 Jun 1992
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
KLYSTRONS
RELIABILITY
STANFORD LINEAR COLLIDER
MODULATION
OPERATION
PERFORMANCE
ACCELERATOR FACILITIES
ACCELERATORS
ELECTRON TUBES
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
EQUIPMENT
LINEAR ACCELERATORS
MICROWAVE EQUIPMENT
MICROWAVE TUBES
430303* - Particle Accelerators- Experimental Facilities & Equipment