Low Current, Long Beam Pulse with SLED

The 3 km long linac at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is used for fixed target experiments such as E-155, with energies up to 50 GeV. The SLAC Energy Development (SLED) system increase the maximum no-load energy by a factor of 1.6, but it also causes a varying beam energy curve. To provide a long pulse or bunch train for the experiment the energy profile has to be flat. Besides more sophisticated methods such as varying the phase of two klystrons feeding one structure section as proposed in the NLC design, we describe the method used for E-155 in spring of 1997. The desired low charged beam didn’t have any significant beam loading, but by inserting a 180° phase notch during the SLED pulse, a beam pulse of up to 500 ns was achieved. The energy range without compensation would have been 15%, while with compensation the energy spread was reduced to about 0.15%. The phase notch was achieved by triggering a pair of two additional 180° phase switches about half a structure fill-time after the SLED pulse was triggered. Simulations are compared with the experimental result. Contributed to the IEEE Particle Accelerator Conference, PAC99 New York, NY, 29-Mar-1999 to 2-Apr-1999 * Work supported by Department of Energy contract DE–AC03–76SF00515.