Visit to FDI Technology, Saint Petersburg, 7-9 November 2005 Travel Report

The Superconducting H- Linac under study at CERN, and thus the LINAC 4 and, well before, the 3 MeV test stand, require a high performance beam chopper. It has to establish the required beam time-structure by deflecting towards a dump part of the beam entering the chopper line. The deflector basically consists of two 50  lines facing each other and driven with opposite polarity signals so as to establish an electric field in between. The pulse generators required for driving these lines are very sophisticated items because they must exhibit fast pulse fronts (2 ns), wide pulse length dynamic range (8 ns to 1 s), high repetition frequency (45 MHz) and high output voltage (>500 V). Although a CERN in-house solution to provide the required drivers has been identified , we continued prospecting the market for possible industrial alternatives. In this contest FID Technology has been contacted and the visit showed that their proprietary solid-state devices might indeed be the key element of a simpler pulse generator.