Design of a system of high voltage pulsed power converters for CERN´s Linac4 H-ion source

The new linear accelerator (Linac4) under construction at CERN [1] is designed to provide a 160MeV negative hydrogen ions (H-) beam to the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB). Linac4 is intended to replace the ageing 50MeV Linac2 and aims to increase the LHC beam luminosity. Several H-sources are under development [2] in view of gradually increasing the H-intensity to 80 mA with a limited co-extracted electron beam of 1-1.5 A. Previous attempts to reach this H-beam intensity showed the necessity of replacing the source´s high voltage DC power supplies with high voltage pulsed power converters, with the objective of mitigating destructive arc events inside the source between two RF pulses (beam extraction length of 700 μs with 2 Hz repetition rate).