Relativistic klystrons

Experimental work is underway by a SLAC-LLNL-LBL collaboration to investigate the feasibility of using relativistic klystrons as a power source for future high gradient accelerators. Two different relativistic klystron configurations have been built and tested to date: a high grain multicavity klystron at 11.4 GHz and a low gain two cavity subharmonic buncher driven at 5.7 GHz. In both configurations power is extracted at 11.4 GHz. In order to understand the basic physics issues involved in extracting RF from a high power beam, we have used both a single resonant cavity and a multi-cell traveling wave structure for energy extraction. We have learned how to overcome our previously reported problem of high power RF pulse shortening, and have achieved peak RF power levels of 170 MW with the RF pulse of the same duration as the beam current pulse. 6 refs., 3 figs., 3 tabs