Design of a 100 kW Solid-State RF Pulse Amplifier with a TE011 Mode RF Combiner at 476 MHz

Abstract

Solid-state RF amplifiers, which have long lifetimes and small failures, are the recent current of high-power RF sources for particle accelerators. Hence, we designed a 100 kW solid-state amplifier with a TE011 mode cavity (Q0=100, 000) power combiner with extreme low-loss operated at 476 MHz and a 6 us pulse width. Developing this amplifier is for replacement of a high-power amplifier using an induction output tube, IOT, in the X-ray free-electron laser, SACLA. In SACLA, highly RF phase and amplitude stabilities of less than 0.01 deg. and 10⁻⁴ in rms are necessary to stable lasing within a 10 % intensity fluctuation. The amplifier comprises a drive amplifier, a reentrant cavity RF power divider, 100 final amplifier modules with a 1 kW output each and a TE011 mode cavity combiner. Water-cooling within 10 mK and a DC power supply with a noise of less than -100 dBV at 10 Hz for the amplifier is necessary to realize the previously mentioned stabilities. Based on the experimental results of a test amplifier module and test combiner cavities, possibility to realize the above-mentioned specifications is large. We report the detail and a part of the performance of the 100 kW amplifier.