High Voltage Pulse Generator for High-Energy Beam Kickers

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has been selected as the site for the Electron Ion Collider (EIC). This upgrade will make use of existing infrastructure. However, new equipment and facilities are required, including a 150 MeV energy recovery LINAC, which requires a new short pulse, stripline kicker. The kicker requires a power system that can deliver 50 kV pulses with a width less than 38 ns into a 50 ? load with low jitter. The power system must be highly reliable and robust to potential faults. Inductive adders are solid-state pulsed power systems that can robustly and reliable produce short, high- voltage pulses into a variety of loads. Eagle Harbor Technologies (EHT), Inc. is leveraging our previous experience developing inductive adders to produce a pulsed power system that can meet the needs of the BNL kickers. This inductive adder incorporates EHT’s proprietary gate drive that enables precision solid- state switching required for good current sharing a low-jitter operation. In the Phase I, EHT modeled, designed, and built a single stage of an inductive adder. EHT demonstrated that this printed circuit board (PCB) can meet the pulse shape, jitter, and pulse repetition frequency requirements while switching 1 kA. Using the single-stage model, EHT developed a preliminary circuit model for the 50 kV system to show that the Phase I results can scale to the full system. In the Phase II program, EHT will use the Phase I results to update the switching PCBs and design a full-scale 50 kV inductive adder. In the second year of the program, EHT will build the 50 kV inductive adder and test it into a relevant load to demonstrate the pulse shape, jitter, pulse repetition frequency at 50 kV. The proposed work would develop a 50 kV inductive adder for stripline kickers for use at the EIC at BNL. The EIC will enable new research in nuclear physics and quantum chromodynamics as well as ensure U.S. leadership in accelerator science and technology. However, this same inductive adder technology can be applied to kickers at other accelerators including light sources and medical accelerators, which are two larger markets for this technology. Additionally, there are aerospace and defense-related applications that require fast-rise-time high-voltage pulses. While EHT has a product family of inductive adders, it is extremely likely that the proposed work would significantly increase their capability to allow them to be deployed in new markets.