RF Perturbation Measurements in Long Linac Cavities

Equipment and procedures have been developed for measuring the axial accelerating electric field in proton linear accelerator cavities. The method used is the usual one of measuring the change in resonant frequency caused by a small perturbing sphere on the axis of the cavity. The frequency change is determined at millimeter intervals along the axis by measuring the corresponding period length using an on-line digital computer. The computation is carried out on the computer so that the derived fields can be obtained, integrated, plotted, and compared. The method is rapid and the increased precision of the measurement allows better knowledge of the fields in operating linear accelerators. This equipment has been used on the 50-MeV linac injector for the Zero Gradient Synchrotron at Argonne National Laboratory.1 It has also been used to measure the axial field in a cavity with fields which can be calculated using a field computational program.2 The measured and calculated field values have been compared.