Author: Kondo, C.
Paper Title Page
MOPB005 High Gradient Operation of 8 GeV C-Band Accelerator in SACLA 186
 
  • T. Inagaki, C. Kondo, Y. Otake, T. Sakurai
    RIKEN SPring-8 Center, Sayo-cho, Sayo-gun, Hyogo, Japan
 
  SACLA (SPring-8 angstrom compact free electron laser) is the X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) facility. In order to shorten the 8 GeV accelerator length, a C-band (5712 MHz) accelerator was employed. Since the accelerating gradient of C-band accelerating structure is 35 MV/m in nominal, the active accelerator length is 230 m. In total, 64 klystrons, 64 pulse compressors, and 128 accelerating structures are used. In order to withstand the high surface field (~ 100 MV/m), and to reduce the amount of dark current, which decreases the demagnetization effect of undulators, the accelerating structures are carefully fabricated in the factory. After high power RF conditioning of 500 hours, the beam commissioning was started in February 2011. For night time of the commissioning, we continued the RF conditioning. The RF breakdown rate of the structure was steadily decreased. Now we operate the accelerator with the beam energy as much as 8.3 GeV, and the accelerating gradient of 37 MV/m in average. We found the amount of dark current is small enough. So far no trouble occurred in C-band RF components of 64 sets.