RF characterization and beam measurements with 3D printed Fast Faraday Cups

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel 3D printed Fast Faraday Cup design for measuring short ion bunches in particle accelerators, demonstrating its RF characteristics and performance compared to traditional designs.

Contribution

Introduces a new additive manufacturing-based FFC design, including RF characterization and beam measurement results, enhancing measurement capabilities for short bunches.

Findings

3D printed FFC performs comparably to traditional designs

Successful RF characterization of the 3D printed FFC

Effective measurement of ion bunches at GSI

Abstract

The early stages of most particle accelerator chains produce sub-ns bunches with velocities in the range of 1 to 20% of the speed of light. Fast Faraday Cups (FFC) are designed to measure the longitudinal charge distribution of these short bunches of free charges. Coaxial designs have been utilized at the GSI's linear accelerator UNILAC to characterize ion bunches with bunch lengths ranging from a few hundred ps to a few ns. The typical design goals are to avoid the pre-field of the charges and to suppress secondary electron emission, while retaining the capability of bunch-by-bunch measurements. In this contribution, a novel FFC design manufactured using additive manufacturing, e.g. laser powder bed fusion is presented and compared with a traditionally produced FFC. The design considerations, RF characterization, and selected measurements with ion beam at GSI are shown.