NEWPORT NEWS, Va. – A Pennsylvania company has been awarded a $3.54 million contract to provide 84 klystrons to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.
The 13 kW klystrons, devices which will generate the electromagnetic fields that will accelerate the CEBAF electron beam,, will be used in the construction of the lab’s 12 GeV Upgrade, a $310 million project that will provide an international community of physicists with a cutting-edge facility for studying the basic building blocks of the visible universe.
L-3 Communications, based in Williamsport, PA, was awarded the contract for the klystrons after a competitive bid process.
Jefferson Lab is a world-leading nuclear physics research laboratory devoted to the study of the building blocks of matter – quarks and gluons. The upgrade will double the energy of the lab’s electron beam from 6 billion electron volts (GeV) to 12 GeV. Construction began this spring.