SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Radio Frequency noise induced bunch lengthening can strongly affect the Large Hadron Collider performance through luminosity reduction, particle loss, and other effects. Models and theoretical formalisms demonstrating the dependence of the LHC longitudinal bunch length on the RF station noise spectral content have been presented*,**. Initial measurements validated these studies and determined the performance limiting RF components. For the existing LHC LLRF implementation the bunch length increases with a rate of 1 mm/hr, which is higher than the intrabeam scattering diffusion and leads to a 27% bunch length increase over a 20 hour store. This work presents measurements from the LHC that better quantify the relationship between the RF noise and longitudinal emittance blowup. Noise was injected at specific frequency bands and with varying amplitudes at the LHC accelerating cavities. The experiments presented in this paper confirmed the predicted effects on the LHC bunch length due to both the noise around the synchrotron frequency resonance and the noise in other frequency bands aliased down to the synchrotron frequency by the periodic beam sampling of the accelerating voltage.
*T. Mastorides et.al., "RF system models for the LHC with Application to Longitudinal Dynamics,"
**T. Mastorides et.al., "RF Noise Effects on Large Hadron Collider Beam Diffusion"
SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
LBNL, Berkeley, California, USA
The feedback control of intrabunch instabilities driven by E-Clouds or strong head-tail coupling (TMCI) requires sufficient bandwidth to sense the vertical position and drive multiple sections of a nanosecond scale bunch. These requirements impose challenges and limits in the design and implementation of the feedback system. This paper presents models for the feedback subsystems: receiver, processing channel, amplifier and kicker, that take into account their frequency response and limits. These models are included in multiparticle simulation codes (WARP/CMAD/Head-Tail) and reduced mathematical models of the bunch dynamics to evaluate the impact of subsystem limitations in the bunch stabilization and emittance improvement. With this realistic model of the hardware, it is possible to analyze and design the feedback system. This research is crucial to evaluate the performance boundary of the feedback control system due to cost and technological limitations. These models define the impact of spurious perturbations, noise and parameter variations or mismatching in the performance of the feedback system. The models are validated with simulation codes and measurements of lab prototypes.