The Fermilab Booster - built more than 40 years ago - operates well above the design proton beam intensity of 4x10**12 ppp. Still, the Fermilab neutrino experiments call for even higher intensity of 5.5x10**12 ppp. A multitude of intensity related ef
fects must be overcome in order to meet this goal including suppression of coherent dipole instabilities of transverse oscillations which manifest themselves as a sudden drop in the beam current. In this report we present the results of observation of these instabilities at different tune, coupling and chromaticity settings and discuss possible cures.
The first cryomodule for the beam test facility at the Fermilab New-Muon-Lab building is currently under RF commissioning. Among other diagnostics systems, the transverse position of the helium gas return pipe with the connected 1.3 GHz SRF accelerat
ing cavities is measured along the ~15 m long module using a stretched-wire position monitoring system. An overview of the wire position monitor system technology is given, along with preliminary results taken at the initial module cool down, and during further testing. As the measurement system offers a high resolution, we also discuss options for use as a vibration detector.
A beam position monitor (BPM) upgrade at the KEK Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) damping ring has been accomplished, carried out by a KEK/FNAL/SLAC collaboration under the umbrella of the global ILC R&D effort. The upgrade consists of a high resoluti
on, high reproducibility read-out system, based on analog and processing, and also implements a new automatic gain error correction schema. The technical concept and realization as well as results of beam studies are presented.
The Fermilab Booster is a fast ramping (15Hz) synchrotron which accelerates protons from 400MeV to 8GeV. During commissioning of a transverse digital damper system, it was shown that the damper could provide a measurement of the machine tune througho
ut the cycle by exciting just 1 of the 84 bunches with minimal impact on the machine operation. The algorithms used to make the measurement have been incorporated into the damper FPGA firmware allowing for real-time tune monitoring of all Booster cycles.
