Studies of energy recovery linacs at Jefferson laboratory: 1 GeV demonstration of energy recovery at CEBAF and studies of the multibunch, multipass beam breakup instability in the 10 kW FEL upgrade driver

• Main Author: Tennant, Christopher D.
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: W&M ScholarWorks 2006
• Subjects: Electromagnetics and Photonics
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623505; https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3296&context=etd

An energy recovering linac (ERL) offers an attractive alternative for generating intense electron beams by approaching the operational efficiency of a storage ring while maintaining the superior beam quality typical of a linear accelerator. Two primary physics challenges exist in pushing the frontier of ERL performance. The first is energy recovering a high energy beam while demonstrating operational control of two coupled beams in a common transport channel. The second is controlling the high average current effects in ERLs, specifically a type of beam instability called multipass beam breakup (BBU). This work addresses each of these issues.;A successful 1 GeV energy recovery demonstration with a maximum-to-injection energy ratio of 51:1 was carried out on the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at Jefferson Laboratory in an effort to address issues related to beam quality preservation in a large scale system. With a 1.3 km recirculation length and containing 312 superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities, this experiment has demonstrated energy recovery on the largest scale, and through the largest SRF environment, to date.;The BBU instability imposes a potentially severe limitation to the average current that can be accelerated in an ERL. Simulation results for Jefferson Laboratory's 10 kW free electron laser (FEL) Upgrade Driver predict the occurrence of BBU below the nominal operating current. Measurements of the threshold current are described and shown to agree to within 10% of predictions from BBU simulation codes. This represents the first time the codes have been benchmarked with experimental data. With BBU limiting the beam current, several suppression schemes were developed. These include direct damping of the higher-order mode using two different cavity-based feedbacks and modifying the electron beam optics. Each method increased the threshold current for stability. Beam optical control methods proved to be so effective that they are routinely used in normal operation of the 10 kW FEL Upgrade.