Design, fabrication, and characterization of a drift tube linac type double gap re-buncher cavity

The Low Energy High Intensity Proton Accelerator (LEHIPA) at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India, has recently been commissioned to the target energy of 20 MeV by beam acceleration through a 352 MHz radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) and drift tube linac (DTL). The medium energy beam transport (MEBT) line of LEHIPA matches the 3 MeV beam from RFQ to the DTL using four electromagnetic quadrupoles and a re-buncher cavity. In the beam transport lines of high frequency linacs, TM010 mode single gap buncher cavities are conventionally used, while a double gap re-buncher cavity was chosen for the short length LEHIPA MEBT based on beam dynamics simulations. The 352 MHz double gap re-buncher cavity has been designed in a DTL type geometry with a cell length of βλ. This double gap cavity is found to be more power efficient with a higher shunt impedance and transit time factor than the conventional single gap buncher cavity. Electromagnetic design simulations, fabrication details, low power and high-power RF test results, and beam test results of the re-buncher cavity are presented in this paper.