EPICS BASED HIGH POWER RF CONDITIONING CONTROL SYSTEM FOR THE SNS ACCELERATOR RF TEST FACILITY

Charged particle accelerators use various vacuum windows on their accelerating RF cavities to pass very high RF power through. Before placing on the cavities the windows should be cleaned, baked and fully RF conditioned due to poor vacuum caused by outgassing and other contamination. The linear accelerator (linac) in the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) in Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) contains various accelerating structures and the RF conditioning of their high power vacuum windows is necessary for present work as well as future upgrade and development. An example is the coaxial fundamental power coupler (FPC) with an annular alumina ceramic window for each of the 81 superconducting RF cavities in the SNS linac. The FPC’s need to be tested up to 650 kW peak in travelling wave and 2.6 MW peak in standing wave in 1.3 microsecond 60 PPS RF. In this paper, an Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) based RF conditioning system for the SNS RF test facility (RFTF) has been presented [1].