Final Report on "Development and Testing of Advanced Accelerator Structures and Technologies at 11.424 GHz"
- Naval Research Laboratory
This is the final report on the research program ?Development and Testing of Advanced Accelerator Structures and Technologies at 11.424 GHz,? which was carried out by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) under Interagency Agreement DE?AI02?01ER41170 with the Department of Energy. The period covered by this report is 15 July 2010 ? 14 July 2013. The program included two principal tasks. Task 1 involved a study of the key physics issues related to the use of high gradient dielectric-loaded accelerating (DLA) structures in rf linear accelerators and was carried out in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Euclid Techlabs LLC. Task 2 involved a study of high power active microwave pulse compressors and was carried out in collaboration with Omega-P, Inc. and the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Nizhny Novgorod. The studies under Task 1 were focused on rf-induced multipactor and breakdown in externally driven DLA structures at the 200-ns timescale. Suppression of multipactor and breakdown are essential to the practical application of dielectric structures in rf linear accelerators. The structures that were studied were developed by ANL and Euclid Techlabs and their performance was evaluated at high power in the X-band Magnicon Laboratory at NRL. Three structures were designed, fabricated, and tested, and the results analyzed in the first two years of the program: a clamped quartz traveling-wave (TW) structure, a externally copper-coated TW structure, and an externally copper-coated dielectric standing-wave (SW) structure. These structures showed that rf breakdown could be largely eliminated by eliminating dielectric joints in the structures, but that the multipactor loading was omnipresent. In the third year of the program, the focus of the program was on multipactor suppression using a strong applied axial magnetic field, as proposed by Chang et al. [C. Chang et al., J. Appl. Phys. 110, 063304 (2011).], and a successful experiment was carried out that demonstrated suppression of multipactor in the uniform-field region of a TW DLA structure. However, in accordance with theory, the multipactor was enhanced in regions of the structure with lower values of axial magnetic field. Under Task 2, there were two two-month experimental runs at NRL that were used to characterize the performance of high power two-channel dual-mode active microwave pulse compressor configurations that used electron-beam triggered switch cavities. The pulse compressors were designed and fabricated by Omega-P, Inc. and the Russian Institute of Applied Physics and tested in the Magnicon Laboratory at NRL. These pulse compressors made use of an electron beam discharge from a cylindrical knife-edged Mo cathode coated with a CVD diamond film that was driven by a ?100 kV, 100 ns high voltage pulse. The electron beam was used to change the resonant frequency of the switch cavities in order to create the output microwave pulse. The compressor channels included a TE01 input and output section and a TE02 energy storage cavity, followed by a switch assembly that controlled the coupling between the TE01 and TE02 modes. In the initial state, the switch cavity was in resonance, the reflection from the cavity was out of phase, and the mode conversion was only ~2-3%, allowing the energy storage cavity to fill. When the electron beam was discharged into the switch cavity, the cavity was shifted out of resonance, causing the phase of the reflection to change by ~π. As a result of the change in the reflection phase, the mode coupling in the conical taper was greatly increased, and could approach ~100%, permitting the energy storage cavity to empty in one cavity round trip time of the TE02 mode to produce a high power output pulse. The second experiment runs demonstrated a 190 MW, ~20 ns compressed pulse at 25.7 gain and ~50% efficiency, using a 7.4 MW, 1 ?s drive pulse from the magnicon. The success of this experiment suggests a path to future high gain active versions of the SLED 2 pulse compressor at SLAC.
- Research Organization:
- NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY, WASHINGTON, DC 20375
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AI02-01ER41170
- OSTI ID:
- 1095585
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-NRL-41170-1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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