• M. Liepe, S.A. Belomestnykh, J. Dobbins, R.P.K. Kaplan, C.R. Strohman, B.K. Stuhl
  Cornell University, Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics, Ithaca, New York

A new digital control system has been developed, providing great flexibility, high computational power and low latency for a wide range of control and data acquisition applications. This system is now installed in the CESR storage ring and stabilizes the vector sum field of two of the superconducting CESR 500 MHz cavities and the output power from the driving klystron. The installed control system includes in-house developed digital and RF hardware, very fast feedback and feedforward control, a state machine for automatic start-up and trip recovery, cw and pulsed mode operation, fast quench detection, and cavity frequency control. Several months of continuous operation have proven high reliability of the system. The achieved field stability surpasses requirements.

• M. Liepe, S.A. Belomestnykh, J. Dobbins, R.P.K. Kaplan, C.R. Strohman, B.K. Stuhl
  Cornell University, Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics, Ithaca, New York
• C. Hovater, T. Plawski
  Jefferson Lab, Newport News, Virginia

The superconducting cavities in an Energy-Recovery-Linac will be operated with a high loaded Q of several 1E7, possible up to 1E8. Not only has no prior control system ever stabilized the RF field in a linac cavity with such high loaded Q, but also highest field stability in amplitude and phase is required at this high loaded Q. Because of a resulting bandwidth of the cavity of only a few Hz, this presents a significant challenge: the field in the cavity extremely sensitive to any perturbation of the cavity resonance frequency due to microphonics and Lorentz force detuning. To prove that the RF field in a high loaded Q cavity can be stabilized, and that Cornell's newly developed digital control system is able to achieve this, the system was connected to a high loaded Q cavity at the JLab IR-FEL. Excellent cw field stability – about 2·10^-4 rms in relative amplitude and 0.03 deg rms in phase - was achieved at a loaded Q of 2.1·10⁷ and 1.4E8, setting a new record in high loaded Q operation of a linac cavity. Piezo tuner based cavity frequency control proved to be very effective in keeping the cavity on resonance and allowed reliable to ramp up to high gradients in less than 1 second.

• M.A. Palmer, J. Dobbins, C.R. Strohman, E. Tanke
  CESR-LEPP, Ithaca, New York

A key factor in the colliding beam performance of the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) is the impact of parasitic beam-beam interactions between bunches in the two beams as they follow their electrostatically separated orbits in a single vacuum chamber. In order to better investigate the differential performance of bunches in CESR, instrumentation electronics has been developed to allow acquisition of turn-by-turn data from multiple bunches simultaneously. The electronics consists of a standardized digital board centered around an Analog Devices TigerSHARC family digital signal processor, a communications interface, and an interface to the CESR Precision Timing System. Mated to these components is an analog front end and digitizer board which is customized for the particular diagnostic device of interest. Front ends have been developed for beam position monitor, luminosity monitor, and beam profile monitor applications. We describe the design and characterization of this new hardware.