Design Efforts of PAL XFEL RF Components to Reduce RF Breakdown Due to Surface Electric Gradient in High Power Operation

The peak klystron power for the PAL (Pohang Accelerator Laboratory) XFEL (X-ray Free Electron Laser) is up to 80 MW which is higher than that of PLS-II LINAC. To prevent the RF breakdown such a high power operation, some of RF components need to be redesigned to reduce the surface electric field gradient to be less than the breakdown gradient at the vacuum-metal surface. For instances, the redesign of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Energy Doubler (SLED) system, the directional coupler and 3dB power splitter using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation will be presented.