Initial Performance of the NAL 200-MeV Linear Accelerator

Abstract

The first three months of operation of the NAL linac after first achieving a 200-MeV beam have been encouraging. The design performance has been achieved at beam intensities of about 20 mA both in the transverse emittance and the momentum spread. Attempts have not been made to go to intensities of 100 mA or greater as yet, and it will be interesting to see how the beam quality is affected by intensity. It is expected that when the linac rf phase and amplitude controls are properly working, the beam quality will be less than the design values. In particular, the momentum spread at the present operating currents is sufficiently small so that a debunching cavity currently is not envisioned. The beam measurements made so far confirm the theoretical results obtained with the PARMILA dynamics program. The particle distributions used in the program are those measured at the entrance to the linac. The large number of components in the systems have lead to concern over the reliability of the linac. The performance over the last three months has dispelled some of this concern. As running periods have increased the failure rate has decreased. Only two major problems stand out at this time. The first is the failure of the spring contacts on the filament leads to the power amplifier tubes. Installation care and the elimination of two of the contact rings which were not water-cooled seem to be providing at least a temporary solution.