Vacuum Tube Operation Tuning for a High Intensity Beam Acceleration in J-PARC RCS

Tetrode vacuum tubes in the J-PARC RCS are used under a reduced filament voltage condition compared with the rating value to prolong the tube life time. One tube reached the end of life in 2020; it was the first case in the RCS after 60,000 hours operation time. This means the reduced filament voltage works well because the tube has been running beyond an expected life time suggested by the tube manufacturer. However, an electron emission from the filament is decreased by the reduced filament voltage. Although the large amplitude of the anode current is necessary for the high intensity beam acceleration to compensate an wake voltage, a solid-state amplifier to drive a control grid circuit almost reaches the output power limit because of the poor electron emission. We changed the filament voltage reduction rate from 15 % to 5 %; the required power of the solid-state amplifier was fairly reduced, whereas the accelerated beam power was same. We will describe the measurement results of the vacuum tube parameters in terms of the filament voltage tuning.
Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil