Fast Automatic Ramping of High Average Power Guns

The electron guns at PITZ, FLASH and European XFEL are standing wave structures which operate at high average power (>40 kW) to produce long trains of high quality beams. This amount of power heats the cavity surface enough to change signicantly the gun resonance frequency. As consequence, to keep the reection low, the RF power ramp must be enough slow to permit the water cooling system to keep the gun temperature close to the set-point. Also, as the temperature probe sits close to the surface of the iris, the required gun temperature set-point to maintain the gun on resonance is a function of the average power. The RF power ramping is a difficult process in which temperature and reection must be monitored to adjust accordingly the temperature set-point and the ramping speed of the RF power. An automatic software to adjust the RF frequency and the temperature set-point of the PITZ gun in parallel to the RF power ramping has been developed. The use of this software has signicantly reduced the time spent to start up the gun or to recover from interlocks, increasing the time spent at nominal parameters which would also be very important for user facilities