A thyratron trigger with low jitter

A very low jitter trigger is required for the Main Injector Proton Injection kicker. The trigger is also designed to be reliable against thyratron arc down to the trigger grid. The trigger uses a wide band coaxial cable transformer that operates at 1500 V with a 500 ns pulse width and a 10%-90% rise time of 20 ns. An FET is used as the switch and a very low inductance capacitor is used to store the trigger energy. Typical total jitter between TTL trigger pulse and the 50% load current value has been measured at <2 ns over a period of 8 hours and 10⁵ pulses. About half this jitter is attributed to the trigger system, and the other half to the thyratron. The trigger has been subjected to several thyratron sparks without problem. The paper will present the trigger schematic, waveforms, components and the thyratron connections