Field stabilization of Alvarez-type cavities

Abstract

Alvarez-type cavities are commonly used to reliably accelerate high quality hadron beams. Optimization of their longitudinal field homogeneity is usually accomplished by post-couplers, i.e., additional rods being integrated into the cavity. This paper instead proposes to use the stems that keep the drift tubes for that purpose. As their individual azimuthal orientations do not change the cavity’s undisturbed operational mode, they comprise a set of free parameters that can be used to modify higher mode field patterns. The latter have significant impact on the robustness of the operational mode with respect to eventual perturbations. Several optimized stem configurations are presented and benchmarked against each other. The path to obtain these configurations is paved analytically and worked out in detail through simulations. It is shown also by measurements that the method provides for flat field distributions and very low field tilt sensitivities without insertion of post-couplers.