Photonic Band Gap Accelerator Demonstration at Ku-Band

We report the successful cold test and hot test demonstrations of a metal Ku-band PBG accelerator structure. The 17.140 GHz 6-cell PBG accelerator structure with reduced long-range wakefields was designed for the experiment. The copper structure was electroformed and cold-tested. Tuning was performed through chemical etching of the rods. Final cold test measurements were found to be in very good agreement with the design. The structure was installed on the beam line at the accelerator laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and powered with 2 MW of peak power from the 17.14 GHz klystron. The electron beam was accelerated by 1.4 MeV inside the PBG accelerator, which is in excellent agreement with the predicted accelerating gradient of 35 MV/m.