Progress on new high power RF system for lansce DTL

A new 201.25 MHz RF system is being developed for the LANSCE proton drift tube linac (DTL). A planned upgrade will replace parts of the DTL RF system with new generation components. When installed for the LANSCE-R project, the new system will reduce the total number of electron power tubes from twenty-four to seven in the RF power plant. The 3.4 MW final power amplifier will use a Thales TH628 Diacrode
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. This state- of-the-art device eliminates the large anode modulator of the present triode system, and will be driven by a new tetrode intermediate power amplifier. In this mode of operation, this intermediate stage will provide 150 kW of peak power. The first DTL tank requires up to 400 kW of RF power, which will be provided by the same tetrode driver amplifier. A prototype system is being constructed to test components, using some of the infrastructure from previous RF projects. High voltage DC power became available through innovative re-engineering of an installed system. A summary of the design and construction of the intermediate power amplifier will be presented and test results will be summarized.