Initial Measurements of Beam Breakup Instability in the Advanced Test Accelerator

Abstract

This paper reports the measurements of beam breakup (BBU) instability performed on the Advanced Test Accelerator (ATA) up to the end of February, 1984. The main objective was to produce a high current usable electron beam at the ATA output. A well-known instability is BBU which arises from the accelerator cavity modes interacting with the electron beam. The dominant mode is TM/sub 130/ at a frequency of approximately 785 MHz. It couples most strongly to the beam motion and has been observed to grow in the Experimental Test Accelerator (ETA) which has only eight accelerator cavities. ATA has one hundred and seventy cavities and, therefore, the growth of BBU is expected to be more severe. In this paper, BBU measurements are reported for ATA with beam currents of 4 to 7 kA. Analysis showed that the growth of the instability with propagation distance was as expected for the lower currents. However, the high-current data showed an apparent higher growth rate than expected. An explanation for this anomaly is given in terms of a ''corkscrew'' excitation. The injector BBU noise level for a field emission brush cathode was found to be an order of magnitude lower than for a cold plasma more » discharge cathode. These injector rf amplitudes agree very well with values obtained using the method of differenced B sub solar loops. « less