Heavy Beam Loading in Linear Electron Accelerators

The influence of the beam current on the length, the obtainable particle energy and the efficiency of a linear accelerator is considered. The beam loading is especially important if the accelerator waveguide has low losses The efficiency, defined as the ratio of H.F power transformed into kinetic energy to the total H F power fed to the accelerator, can have a high value, 70-80%, but the particle energy obtainable drops considerably with heavy beam loading.