An rf modulated electron gun pulser for linacs

Present linac injector designs often make use of sub-harmonic prebuncher cavities to properly bunch the electron beam before injection into a buncher and subsequent accelerating cavities. This paper proposes an rf modulated thermionic gun which would allow the sub-harmonic buncher to be eliminated from the injector. The performance parameters for the proposed gun are 120 kV operating voltage, macropulse duration-single pulse mode 2 nsec, multiple pulse mode 100 nsec, rf modularing frequency 500 MHz, charge per micropulse 0.4 nC, macropulse repetition frequency 10 Hz (max). The gun pulser uses a grid modulated planar triode to drive the gun cathode. The grid driver takes advantage of recently developed modular CATV rf drivers, high performance solid state pulser devices, and high-frequency fiber optic transmitters for telecommunications. Design details are presented with associated SPICE runs simulating operation of the gun