Diagnostics for low energy buncher stability at PLF, Mumbai

The buncher system at Pelletron Linac Facility (PLF), Mumbai consists of room-temperature double-harmonic drift bunchers, situated at the entrance of the Pelletron accelerator and a superconducting cavity at the injection of the LINAC. Low energy (LE) bunchers operate at sub harmonic of the LINAC reference clock (∼150 MHz)) with a bunching efficiency ∼ 66% and a typical FWHM of 1.5 ns.The dark current between adjacent bunches is swept away by RF parallel plate sweeper situated at exit of the Pelletron operating at f/32. The transit time variation arising due to Pelletron terminal voltage fluctuations are compensated by locking the reference of the LE bunchers to the phase detector operating at f/4 and situated at the injection of the LINAC. For a stable injection in the LINAC, the LE bunchers, the sweeper and the phase detector need too be phase synchronized with the LINAC master clock. To achieve a better stability on the phase lock, detailed phase stability measurements of the RF subsystem consisting of various RF devices, which operate at different sub harmonic of LINAC clock (f/32, f/16, f/8, f/4 and f) have been carried out. It was observed that temperature instabilities, ground loops and poor RF/EMI shielding due to aging effects were responsible for the phase jitter and drifts. The long term drifts and phase noise in the RF control of the LE buncher system have been minimized to a level better than 50 ps. (author)