Campaign to minimize the transverse impedance of the DARHT-2 induction linac cells

This paper discusses the multi-year ''campaign'' to measure and reduce the transverse impedances of the original DARHT-2 accelerator cells in order to limit the beam-breakup instability (BBU) growth through the machine. A series of three prototype cells were designed, modeled, and measured. One of the most important methods for limiting the impedance was the introduction of ferrite absorbers in the oil region immediately upstream of the insulator. When properly tuned in terms of thickness, the effective Q's could be significantly reduced for both the 10 inch ''standard'' cells and the 14 inch ''injector'' cells. We also present a new experimental method (twin lead-loop) to measure the transverse impedance. This method has a number of important advantages over the well-known TSD approach, especially in the low Q regime. For the final prototype standard cell design, we found that Z-perp could be limited to <300 ohms/m with Q's ranging from 3 to 6. There was reasonable agreement between measurements and simulation results from the AMOS code (peak amplitudes within 25-30 percent) with the exception that the resonant mode around 200 MHz had a double-peaked structure that could not be reproduced by simulation.