Radio frequency pulse compression experiments at SLAC

Proposed future positron-electron linear colliders would be capable of investigating fundamental processes of interest in the 0.5-5 TeV beam-energy range. At the SLAC Linear Collider (SLC) gradient of about 20 MV/m this would imply prohibitive lengths of about 50-250 kilometers per linac. The authors can reduce the length by increasing the gradient but this implies high peak power, on the order of 400- to 1000-MW at X-band. One possible way to generate high peak power is to generate a relatively long pulse at a relatively low power and compress it into a shorter pulse with higher peak power. It is possible to compress before DC to RF conversion, as is done using magnetic switching for induction linacs, or after DC to RF conversion, as is done for the SLC. Using RF pulse compression it is possible to boost the 50- to 100-MW output that has already been obtained from high-power X-Band klystrons to the levels required by the linear colliders. In this paper only radio frequency pulse compression (RFPC) is considered