The new CLIC test facility, CTF3, is an
important step in proving the technical feasibility of the CLIC
project. Two kickers are required for CTF3: an extraction kicker for
the combiner ring and a “tail-clipper” in the transfer line to
CLEX. The tail-clipper requirements are extremely challenging, mainly
because of the short (5 ns) field rise-time.
An existing ferrite cored extraction kicker, driven by a thyratron
switched PFN, is installed in the CTF3 combiner ring: however this
kicker presents relatively high beam impedance. In the framework
of the CIEMAT contributions to CTF3 strip-line deflector plates have
been designed to replace the ferrite cored magnet. The existing
thyratron can be used to drive the CTF3 CR extraction strip-lines;
however for CLIC ~10kV rectangular pulses, with up to 10MHz burst-rate,
and 70ns rise and fall times are required. Hence, for CLIC, a
solid-state switch capable of opening and closing is required.
This presentation briefly reviews the main requirements for the CTF3
& CLIC kicker systems and summarizes the progress to date. The two
state-of-the–art solid-state switching topologies, suitable for the
CLIC pulsed power supply, are briefly reviewed and examples of existing
solid-state pulse generators are given. The advantages and
disadvantages of the two topologies are highlighted and the main areas
where further R&D is required is discussed.