The Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA)

At SLAC, we are pursuing the design of a Next Linear Collider (NLC) which would begin with a center-of-mass energy of 0.5 TeV, and would be upgradable to 1.0 TeV and beyond [1]. To achieve this high energy, for the past several years we have been working on the development of a high-gradient 11.4-GHz (X-band) linear accelerator for the main linac of the collider. In this paper, we present the status and initial results from the “Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator ” (NLCTA) [2]. The goal of the NLCTA is to model the high gradient linac of the NLC. It incorporates the new technologies of X-band accelerator structures, rf pulse compression systems and high-power klystrons into a 0.5 to 1.0 GeV linac which is a test bed for beam dynamics issues related to high-gradient acceleration