Ultra Low Cost, Long Life, driver TWTA's for Future Accelerator Injection Systems

60224 A family of traveling wave tubes (TWT), capable of outliving a 20-year accelerator, are being mated to power supplies to produce drive power for klystrons for the Next Linear Collider, at about one-tenth the cost of available commercial amplifiers. This project will develop S, X, and C-band TWTs with full specification performance. Low current, long-life cathodes will be evaluated for each band. In Phase I, the C-band TWT was designed, fabricated, and tested to full specification performance. A paper design of the long-life cathodes was carried out. In Phase II, the S-band TWT will be fabricated and tested. A common pulser/power supply will be fabricated, tested, and mated with the S, C, and X-band family of TWTs. Long-life guns for each band will be fabricated and tested. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: Any application requiring long-life, maintenance-free microwave kilowatt level pulse power is a potential application. This would include any accelerator system and some unattended radar applications at low duty levels.