Cary D Long

Active beam position stabilization of pulsed lasers for long-distance ion profile diagnostics at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS)

A high peak-power Q-switched laser has been used to monitor the ion beam profiles in the superconducting linac at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). The laser beam suffers from position drift due to movement, vibration, or thermal effects on the optical components in the 250-meter long laser beam transport line. We have designed, bench-tested, and implemented a beam position stabilization system by using an Ethernet CMOS camera, computer image processing and analysis, and a piezo-driven mirror platform. The system can respond at frequencies up to 30 Hz with a high position detection accuracy. With the beam stabilization system, we have achieved a laser beam pointing stability within a range of 2 μrad (horizontal) to 4 μrad (vertical), corresponding to beam drifts of only 0.5 mm × 1 mm at the furthest measurement station located 250 meters away from the light source.

Control system for the Spallation Neutron Source H- source test facility Allison scanner.

Spallation Neutron Source is currently in progress of a multiyear plan to ramp ion beam power to the initial design power of 1.4 MW. Key to reaching this goal is understanding and improving the operation of the H(-) ion source. An Allison scanner was installed on the ion source in the test facility to support this improvement. This paper will discuss the hardware and the software control system of the installed Allison scanner. The hardware for the system consists of several parts. The heart of the system is the scanner head, complete with associated bias plates, slits, and signal detector. There are two analog controlled high voltage power supplies to bias the plates in the head, and a motor with associated controller to position the head in the beam. A multifunction data acquisition card reads the signals from the signal detector, as well as supplies the analog voltage control for the power supplies. To synchronize data acquisition with the source, the same timing signal that is used to trigger the source itself is used to trigger data acquisition. Finally, there is an industrial personal computer to control the rest of the hardware. Control software was developed using National Instruments LABVIEW, and consists of two parts: a data acquisition program to control the hardware and a stand alone application for offline user data analysis.

Emittance studies of the Spallation Neutron Source external-antenna H- ion source

A new Allison-type emittance scanner has been built to characterize the ion sources and low energy beam transport systems at Spallation Neutron Source. In this work, the emittance characteristics of the H(-) beam produced with the external-antenna rf-driven ion source and transported through the two-lens electrostatic low energy beam transport are studied. The beam emittance dependence on beam intensity, extraction parameters, and the evolution of the emittance and twiss parameters over beam pulse duration are presented.

The Spallation Neutron Source Beam Commissioning and Initial Operations

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) accelerator delivers a one mega-Watt beam to a mercury target to produce neutrons used for neutron scattering materials research. It delivers ~ 1 GeV protons in short (< 1 us) pulses at 60 Hz. At an average power of ~ one mega-Watt, it is the highest-powered pulsed proton accelerator. The accelerator includes the first use of superconducting RF acceleration for a pulsed protons at this energy. The storage ring used to create the short time structure has record peak particle per pulse intensity. Beam commissioning took place in a staged manner during the construction phase of SNS. After the construction, neutron production operations began within a few months, and one mega-Watt operation was achieved within three years. The methods used to commission the beam and the experiences during initial operation are discussed.