Speaker
Description
We will present the design of a compact, highly efficient, pulse-to-pulse energy-tunable 9.3 GHz linac to generate up to 500 W of 10 MeV electron beam power for medical and security applications. This linac will employ a patented travelling wave accelerating structure which combines the advantages of high efficiency with energy tunability of traveling wave cavities. One of the advantages of this accelerating structure over the standing wave structures commonly used in industrial linacs is that the proposed structure has little power reflected back to the RF signal source, eliminating the need for a heavy, lossy waveguide insulator. In contrast to the side-coupled cavity designs, the proposed structure is symmetrical and therefore it does not have deflecting axial fields that impair the beam transport. The high shunt impedance will allow the linac to achieve an output energy of up to 10 MeV when powered by a compact commercial 9.3 GHz 1.7 MW magnetron. For pulse-to-pulse tuning of the beam output energy we will change the beam-loaded gradient by varying the linac’s triode gun current.
