Construction and testing of an 11.4 GHz dielectric structure based traveling wave accelerator

We report on the design, numerical modeling, and experimental testing of a cylindrical dielectric loaded traveling wave structure for charged particle beam acceleration. This type of structure has similar accelerating properties to disk-loaded metal slow wave structures but with some distinct advantages in terms of simplicity of fabrication and suppression of parasitic wakefield effects. Efficient coupling of external rf power to the cylindrical dielectric waveguide is a technical challenge, particularly with structures of very high dielectric constant ε. We have designed and constructed an X-band structure loaded with a permittivity ε=20 dielectric to be powered by an external rf power source. We have attained high efficiency broadband rf coupling by using a combination of a tapered dielectric end section and a carefully adjusted coupling slot. Bench testing using a network analyzer has demonstrated a power coupling efficiency in excess of 95% with bandwidth of 30 MHz, thus providing a necessary basis for construction of an accelerator using this device. We have also simulated the parameters of this structure using a finite difference time domain electromagnetic solver. Within the limits of the approximations used, the results are in reasonable agreement with the bench measurements.