RF cavity design for a low-cost 1 MeV proton source

In this paper we present the design for a low-cost RF cavity capable of accelerating protons from 100 keV to 1 MeV. The system is designed to meet the specifications from the proposed Alceli LTD medical proton therapy linac, to deliver a 1 nA proton beam current with a 1 kHz repetition rate.
We present a design of an RF normal conducting (NC) re-entrant Cu cavity operating at 40MHz consisting of a coupled two cavity system, both driven by a single Marx generator. The choice of such a low operating frequency for the cavity system enables us to use a relatively low-cost cost Marx Generator as the RF source. Marx generators work in a similar fashion to a Cockcroft-Walton accelerator (without the expensive components), creating a high-voltage pulse by charging a number of capacitors relatively slowly in parallel, then rapidly discharging in series, via spark gaps. Marx generators can deliver 2.5GW, 1 ns pulses, with rise times of 200 ps, and (relatively) low jitter.