Beam breakup growth and reduction experiments in long‐pulse electron beam transport

Abstract

The results of an experimental program whose sole objective is to investigate the cumulative beam breakup instability (BBU) in electron beam accelerators are presented. The BBU growth rate scalings are examined with regard to beam current, focusing field, cavity Q, and propagation distance. A microwave cavity array was designed and fabricated to excite and measure the cumulative BBU resulting from beam interactions with the deflecting TM110 cavity mode. One phase of this experiment used high Q(≊1000) cavities with relatively large frequency spread (Δf/f0≊0.1%). The observed TM110 mode microwave growth between an upstream (second) and a downstream (tenth) cavity indicated BBU growth of 26 dB for an electron beam of kinetic energy of 750 keV, 45 A, and focused by a 1.1 kG solenoidal field. At beam currents of less than 100 A the experiments agreed well with a two‐dimensional continuum theory; the agreement was worse at higher beam currents (≳100 A) due to beam loading. The second‐phase experiments used lower Q(≊200) cavities with relatively low frequency spread (Δf/f0≊0.03%). Theory and experiment agreed well for beam currents up to 220 A. Distance scaling experiments were also performed by doubling the propagation length. Instability growth reduction experiments using the technique of external cavity coupling resulted in a factor of four decrease in energy in BBU growth when seven internal beam cavities were coupled by microwave cable to seven identical external dummy cavities. A theory invoking power sharing between the internal beam cavities and the external dummy cavities was used to explain the experimental reduction with excellent agreement using an equivalent circuit model.