  A bunching system is proposed for the initial stage of CTF3 which consists of
one (two) 3 GHz prebunchers and one 3 GHz travelling wave (TW) buncher with
variable phase velocities. The electron beam is emitted from a 140 KV DC gun.
Since the macropulse beam current (3.5 A) at the exit of the TW buncher is
rather high, inside the TW buncher one has to take the beam loading effect into
consideration. By using PARMELA, it is shown numerically that the bunching
system can provide the bunches whose properties satisfy the design requirement
of CTF3. The 0.8 m long TW buncher working at 2pi/3 mode has two phase
velocities, 0.75 and 1. The dimensions of the caities in the two phase velocity
regions are proposed considering the beam loading effect. The transient beam
loading effect and the multibunch transverse instabilities are studied
numerically, and it is concluded that higher order mode couplers should be
installed in the TW buncher with the loaded quality factor of the dipole mode
lower than 80.
