Current status of the kicker thyratron operation in J-PARC 3GeV RCS

Togashi, Tomohito; Watanabe, Masao  ; Suganuma, Kazuaki ; Takayanagi, Tomohiro   ; Ueno, Tomoaki; Tani, Norio  ; Watanabe, Yasuhiro  

The 3-GeV RCS (Rapid Cycling Synchrotron) at J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex) has the pulse kicker power supply system which uses the thyratron switches for beam extraction. There were many troubles caused by unstable operation of thyratrons after beam commissioning started in January 2009. The, failure rate of the kicker power supply system was about 13%. To improve this status, we have been managed the operations of the thyratron in detail. As a result, the unstable operation has been improved and the failure rate has been achievement less than 0.5% (Run33) in April, 2010. In this paper, we report current status of the thyratron operation of the kicker power supply system.