CEA is committed to the design, construction and commissioning of a Medium Energy Beam Transfer line and a superconducting linac (SCL) for SARAF accelerator in order to accelerate 5mA beam of either protons from 1.3 MeV to 35 MeV or deuterons from 2.6 MeV to 40 MeV. The Low Level RF (LLRF) is a subsystem of the CEA control domain for the SARAF-LINAC instrumentation. The top level requirement of the LLRF system has been presented in the last LLRF conference. The paper shows a simulink model to analyse and determinate the LLRF technical specification. The public bidding for SARAF LLRF is in the last phase: discussion with the selected company. The first prototype test will be performed at the start of 2020.
At the Ibaraki Neutron Medical Research Center, an accelerator-based neutron source for iBNCT (Ibaraki - Boron Neutron Capture Therapy) is being developed using an 8-MeV proton linac and a beryllium-based neutron production target. The proton linac consists of an RFQ and a DTL, which is almost the same as the front part of J-PARC linac. However, here only one high-power klystron is used as the RF source to drive the two cavities, which have quite different Q-values and responses. From June 2016, a cPCI based digital feedback system was applied to the iBNCT accelerator. It serves not only as a controller for the feedback of acceleration fields, but also as a smart operator for the auto-tuning of the two cavities in the meantime, especially during the RF startup process to the full power. The details will be described in this report.
First beam commissioning of SuperKEKB (Phase-1), which is an asymmetry double ring collider of 7-GeV electron and 4-GeV positron beams, which had started from February, has been successfully accomplished at the end of June 2016, and the desired beam current for Phase-1 was achieved in both rings. This paper summarize the operation results related to low level RF (LLRF) control issues during the Phase-1 commissioning, including the system tuning, the coupled bunch instability and the bunch gap transient effect. RF system of SuperKEKB consists of about thirty klystron stations in both rings. Newly developed LLRF control systems were applied to the nine stations among the thirty for Phase-1. The RF reference signal distribution system has been also upgraded for SuperKEKB. These new systems worked well without serious problem and they contributed to smooth progress of the commissioning. The old existing systems, which had been used in the KEKB operation, were still reused for the most stations, and they also worked as soundly as performed in the KEKB operation.
Important efforts have recently been dedicated to the characterisation and improvement of the design of the post-linac collimation system of the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). This system consists of two sections: one dedicated to the collimation of off-energy particles and another one for betatron collimation. The energy collimation system is further conceived as protection system against damage by errant beams. In this respect, special attention is paid to the optimisation of the energy collimator design. The material and the physical parameters of the energy collimators are selected to withstand the impact of an entire bunch train. Concerning the betatron collimation section, different aspects of the design have been optimised: the transverse collimation depths have been recalculated in order to reduce the collimator wakefield effects while maintaining a good efficiency in cleaning the undesired beam halo; the geometric design of the spoilers has been reviewed to minimise wakefields; in addition, the optics design has been optimised to improve the collimation efficiency. This report presents the current status of the the post-linac collimation system of CLIC. Part II is mainly dedicated to the study of the betatron collimation system and collimator wakefield effects.
PAL-XFEL (Pohang Accelerator Laboratory X-ray Free Electron Laser) started RF conditioning in October 2015 and has been operating reliably for ~ 4 years. The machines LLRF and SSA systems contributed to the stable operation of PAL-XFEL with over 99% availability. The LLRF and SSA systems showed some problems in rare cases. The delay caused by the problem is very small, but PAL-XFEL can stop working. Some issues have been identified and resolved. We want to share the experience.
The European Spallation Source (ESS) accelerator is composed of superconducting elliptical cavities. When the facility is running, the cavities are fed with electrical field from klystrons. Parameters of this field are monitored and controlled by the Low-Level Radio Frequency (LLRF) system. Its main goal is to keep the amplitude and phase at a given set-point. The LLRF system is also responsible for the reference clock distribution. During machine operation the cavities are periodically experiencing strain caused by the Lorentz force, appearing when the beam is passing through the accelerating structures. Even small changes of the physical dimensions of the cavity cause a shift of its resonance frequency. This phenomenon, called detuning, causes significant power losses. It is actively compensated by the LLRF control system, which can physically tune lengths of the accelerating cavities with stepper motors (slow, coarse grained control) and piezoelements (active compensation during operation state). The paper describes implementation and tests of the software supporting various aspects of the LLRF system and cavities management. The Piezo Driver management and monitoring tool is dedicated for piezo controller device. The LO Distribution application is responsible for configuration of the local oscillator. The Cavity Simulator tool was designed to provide access to properties of the hardware device, emulating behaviour of elliptical cavities. IPMI Manager software was implemented to monitor state of MicroTCA.4 crates, which are major part of the LLRF system architecture. All applications have been created using the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) framework and built in ESS EPICS Environment (E3).