Conceptual design of the 26.7 MHz RF system for RHIC

The 26.7 MHz (harmonic # h=342) RF system will be used to capture the injected bunched beam from the AGS and accelerate it to a kinetic energy of up to 250 GeV for protons; 100 GeV/u for gold ions. All ions except protons cross transition, and are finally transferred to a storage RF system working at 196 MHz. Each RHIC ring will be provided with two single-ended capacitively loaded quarter-wave cavities; each of these can be dynamically tuned by 100 kHz to compensate for the change in speed of the beam, and can deliver at least 200 kV voltage. A 100 kW tetrode amplifier with local RF feedback is directly coupled to the cavity to minimize phase delay. Prototypes of cavity and amplifier have been built and first test results are presented. >