Update On The High Current Injector For The Stanford Linear Collider

The high current injector has become operational. There are two crucial areas where improvements must be made to meet collider specifications: while the injector can produce up to 1011 e− in a single S-band bucket, initially much of this charge was captured in a low energy tail and was this not suitable for transport through the accelerator and injection into the damping ring. Pulse to pulse position jitter has been observed, resulting in transverse wake field which increases beam emittance. The problems described above contribute to substantial current loss during transport from the injector (40 MeV) to the SLC damping ring (1.2 GeV). Experimental studies are continuing with the aim of understanding and improving beam characteristics including bunch length, pulse to pulse stability and emittance. The present status of these studies is reported.