Beam dynamics design of the Compact Linear Collider Drive Beam injector

In the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) the RF power for the acceleration of the Main Beam is extracted from a high-current Drive Beam that runs parallel to the main linac. The longitudinal and transverse beam dynamics of the Drive Beam injector has been studied in detail and optimized. The injector consists of a thermionic gun followed by a bunching system, some accelerating structures, and a magnetic chicane. The bunching system contains three sub-harmonic bunchers, a prebuncher, and a traveling wave buncher all embedded in a solenoidal magnetic field. The main characteristic of the Drive Beam injector is the phase coding process done by the sub-harmonic bunching system operating at half the acceleration frequency. This process is essential for the frequency multiplication of the Drive Beam. During the phase coding process the unwanted satellite bunches are produced that adversely affects the machine power efficiency. The main challenge is to reduce the population of particles in the satellite bunches in the presence of strong space-charge forces due to the high beam current. The simulation of the beam dynamics has been carried out with parmela with the goal of optimizing the injector performance compared to the existing model studied for the Conceptual Design Report (CDR). The emphasis of the optimization was on decreasing the satellite population, the beam loss in the magnetic chicane and limiting the beam emittance growth in transverse plane.