Development of an RF Conditioning System for Charged-Particle Accelerators

Charged-particle accelerators use various vacuum windows on their accelerating radio-frequency (RF) cavities to throughput very high RF power. Before being placed on the cavities, the windows should be cleaned, baked, and fully RF conditioned to prevent a poor vacuum from outgassing, as well as other forms of contamination. An example is the coaxial fundamental power coupler (FPC) with an annular alumina ceramic window for each of the 81 superconducting RF cavities in the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) linear accelerator. The FPCs needed to be tested up to 650-kW peak in a traveling wave and 2.6 MW with standing wave peaks in 1.3 and 60 pulses/s at 805 MHz. In this paper, an Experimental-Physics-and-Industrial-Control-System-based RF conditioning system for the SNS RF test facility is presented. This paper summarizes the hardware and software design strategies, provides the results obtained, and describes the future research scope.