AUTOMATIC CONDITIONING OF THE CTF3 RF SYSTEM

The RF system of CTF3 (CLIC Test Facility 3) includes ten 35 MW to 40 MW 3 GHz klystrons and one 20 MW 1.5 GHz klystron. High power RF conditioning of the waveguide network and cavities connected to each klystron can be extremely time consuming. Because of this, a fully automatic conditioning system has been developed within a CERN JINR (Dubna) collaboration. It involves relatively minor hardware additions, most of the work being in application and front-end software. The system has already been used very successfully.