Design, simulations, and conditioning of 500 kW fundamental power couplers for a superconducting rf gun

A half-cell superconducting rf electron gun is designed to provide 0.5 A, 2 MeV beam for the Brookhaven National Laboratory R&D Energy Recovery Linac. Total rf power of 1 MW must be delivered to beam to meet the beam current and energy specifications, resulting in very strong coupling. Two opposing fundamental power couplers (FPCs) are employed to minimize the transverse kick to beam traversing the structure and to halve the power through the coupler. A single-window coaxial coupler has been designed to meet the average power and rf coupling requirements. The coupler features a planar beryllia rf window for better handling high thermal stresses and a "pringle"-shaped tip of the antenna for enhancing rf coupling. Two FPCs have been fabricated and tested in preparation for the gun cryomodule assembly. A room-temperature test stand was used for conditioning couplers in full reflection regime with variable phase of the reflecting wave. The couplers were tested up to 250 kW in pulse mode and 125 kW in cw mode at different settings of the reflecting wave phase to expose all rf surfaces along the couplers to high fields. Several multipacting barriers were encountered and successfully processed away. The rf power levels, at which multipacting was found, match well those found in computer simulations.