M. Stettler

Status report on a dc 130 mA, 75 keV proton injector (invited)

A 110 mA, 75 keV dc proton injector is being developed at Los Alamos. A microwave proton source is coupled to a two solenoid, space-charge neutralized, low-energy beam transport (LEBT) system. The ion source produces 110 mA proton current at 75 keV using 600–800 W of 2.45 GHz discharge power. Typical proton fraction is 85%–90% of the total extracted ion current, and the rms normalized beam emittance after transport through a prototype 2.1 m LEBT is 0.20 (πmm mrad). Beam space-charge neutralization is measured to be >98% which enables the solenoid magnetic transport to successfully match the injector beam into a radio-frequency quadrupole. Beam simulations indicate small emittance growth in the proposed 2.8 m low-energy demonstration accelerator LEBT. The LEBT also contains beam diagnostics, steering, and a beam deflector for variable duty factor and accelerator fast protect functions. The injector beam availability status is also discussed.

A 75 keV, 140 mA proton injector

A dc and pulsed-mode 75 keV proton injector has been developed and is used in characterization of a continuous-wave 6.7 MeV, 100 mA radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ). The injector is used frequently at the full RFQ design power (100 mA, 6.7 MeV) where the RFQ admittance (1 rms, normalized) is 0.23 (π mm mrad). The injector includes a 2.45 GHz microwave proton source and a beam space-charge-neutralized, two magnetic-solenoid, low-energy beam-transport system. The design RFQ beam transmission of 95% has been demonstrated at 100 mA RFQ output current.

LEDA beam diagnostics instrumentation: Measurement comparisons and operational experience

The Low Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA) facility has been used to characterize the pulsed- and cw-beam performance of a 6.7 MeV, 100 mA radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ). Diagnostic instrumentation, primarily located in a short beam transport downstream of the RFQ, allow facility commissioners and operators to measure and monitor the RFQ’s accelerated and total beam transmission, beam loss, bunched beam current, beam energy and output phase, and beam position. Transverse beam profile measurements are acquired under both low and high duty-factor pulsed beam conditions using a slow wire scanner and a camera that images beam-induced fluorescence. The wire scanner is also used to acquire transverse beam emittance information using a technique known as a “quad scan”. This paper reviews the measurement performance and discusses the resulting data.The present configuration of the Low-Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA) consists of a 75-keV proton injector, a 6.7-MeV 350-MHz cw radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) with associated high-power and lowlevel rf systems, a 52-magnet periodic lattice followed by a short high-energy beam transport (HEBT) and highpower (670-kW cw) beam stop. The rms beam emittance was measured prior to the installation of the 52-magnet lattice, based on wire-scanner measurements of the beam profile at a single location in the HEBT. New measurements with additional diagnostic hardware have been performed to determine the rms transverse beam properties of the beam at the output of the 6.7-MeV LEDA RFQ. The 52-magnet periodic lattice also includes ten beam position monitors (BPMs) evenly spaced in pairs of two. The BPMs provide a measure of the bunched beam current that exhibits nulls at different locations in the lattice. Model predictions of the locations of the nulls and the strength of the bunched beam current are made to determine what information this data can provide regarding the longitudinal beam emittance.

Microwave proton source development for a high‐current linac injector (invited)a)

Powerful CW proton linear accelerators (100-mA at 0.5--1.0 GeV) are being proposed for spallation neutron-source applications. A 75-keV, 110-mA dc proton injector using a microwave ion source is being tested for these applications. It has achieved 80-keV, 110-mA hydrogen-ion-beam operation. Video and dc beam-current toroid diagnostics are operational, and an EPICS control system is also operational on the 75-keV injector. A technical base development program has also been carried out on a 50-keV injector obtained from Chalk River Laboratories, and it includes low-energy beam transport studies, ion source lifetime tests, and proton-fraction enhancement studies. Technical base results and the present status of the 75-keV injector will be presented.

LEDA beam diagnostics instrumentation: Beam position monitors

The Low Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA) facility located at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) accelerates protons to an energy of 6.7-MeV and current of 100-mA operating in either a pulsed or cw mode. Of key importance to the commissioning and operations effort is the Beam Position Monitor system (BPM). The LEDA BPM system uses five micro-stripline beam position monitors processed by log ratio processing electronics with data acquisition via a series of custom TMS32OC40 Digital Signal Processing (DSP) boards. Of special interest to this paper is the operation of the system, the log ratio processing, and the system calibration technique. This paper will also cover the DSP system operations and their interaction with the main accelerator control system.

Initial operation of the LEDA beam-induced fluorescence diagnostic

A diagnostic based on beam-induced fluorescence has been developed and used to examine the expanded beam in the High-Energy Beam Transport (HEBT) section of the Low Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA). The system consists of a camera, a gas injector, a spectrometer, and a control system. Gas is injected to provide a medium for the beam to excite, the camera captures the resulting image of the fluorescing gas, and the spectrometer measures the spectrum of the emitted light. EPICS was used to control the camera and acquire and store images. Data analysis is presently being performed offline. A Kodak DCS420m professional CCD camera is the primary component of the optical system. InterScience, Inc. modified the camera with the addition of a gain of 4000 image intensifier, thereby producing an intensified camera with a sensitivity of ∼0.5 milli-lux. Light is gathered with a 1″ format, 16–160 mm, Computar zoom lens. This lens is attached to the camera via a Century Precision Optics relay lens. Images obtain...

Space-based FPGA radio receiver design, debug, and development of a radiation-tolerant computing system

Los Alamos has recently completed the latest in a series of Reconfigurable Software Radios, which incorporates several key innovations in both hardware design and algorithms. Due to our focus on satellite applications, each design must extract the best size, weight, and power performance possible from the ensemble of Commodity Off-the-Shelf (COTS) parts available at the time of design. A large component of our work lies in determining if a given part will survive in space and how it will fail under various space radiation conditions. Using two Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGAs, we have achieved 1 TeraOps/second signal processing on a 1920 Megabit/second datastream. This processing capability enables very advanced algorithms such as our wideband RF compression scheme to operate at the source, allowing bandwidth-constrained applications to deliver previously unattainable performance. This paper will discuss the design of the payload, making electronics survivable in the radiation of space, and techniques for debug.

Wide Dynamic‐Range Beam‐Profile Instrumentation for a Beam‐Halo Measurement: Description and Operation

Within the halo experiment conducted at the Low Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA) at LANL, specific beam instruments that acquire horizontally and vertically projected particle-density distributions out to > 100000:1 dynamic range are located throughout the 52-magnet halo lattice. We measured the core of the distributions using traditional wire scanners, and the tails of the distributions using water-cooled graphite scraping devices. The wire scanner and halo scrapers are mounted on the same moving frame whose location is controlled with stepper motors. A sequence within the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) software communicates with a National Instruments LabVIEW virtual instrument to control the motion and location of the scanner/scraper assembly. Secondary electrons from the wire scanner 0.033-mm carbon wire and protons impinging on the scraper are both detected with a lossy-integrator electronic circuit. Algorithms implemented within EPICS and in Research System’s Interactive Data Language subroutines analyze and plot the acquired distributions. This paper describes the beam instrument and our experience with its operation. ∗ Work supported by the US Department of Energy. INTRODUCTION At LEDA, a 100-mA, 6.7-MeV beam is injected into a 52-quadrupole-magnet lattice (see Fig. 1). Within this 11-m FODO lattice, there are nine wire scanner/halo scraper (WS/HS) stations, five pairs of steering magnets and beam position monitors, five loss monitors, and three pulsed-beam current monitors [1]. The WS/HS instrument’s purpose is to measure the beam’s transverse projected distribution. These measured distributions must have sufficient detail to understand beam halo resulting from upstream lattice mismatches [2,3]. The first WS/HS station, located after the fourth quadrupole magnet, verifies the beam’s transverse characteristics after the RFQ exit. A cluster of four WS/HS located after magnets #20, #22, #24, and #26 provides phase space information after the beam has debunched. After magnets #45, #47, #49, and #51 reside the final four WS/HS stations. These four WS/HS acquire projected beam distributions under both matched and mismatched conditions. These conditions are generated by adjusting the firstfour quadrupole magnetic fields so that the RFQ output beam is matched or mismatched in a known fashion to the rest of the lattice. Because the halo takes many lattice periods to fully develop, this final cluster of WS/HS are positioned to be most sensitive to halo generation. FIGURE 1. The 11-m, 52-magnet FODO lattice includes nine WS/HS stations that measure the beam’s transverse projected distributions. As the RFQ output beam is mismatched to the lattice, the WS/HS actually observe a variety of distortions to a properly matched Gaussian-like distribution [2,3]. These distortions appear as distribution tails or backgrounds. It is the size, shape, and extent of these tails that predict specific types of halo. However, not every lattice WS/HS observes the halo generated in phase space because the resultant distribution tails may be hidden from the projection’s view. Therefore, multiple WS/HS are used to observe the various distribution tails.

Automated control and real-time data processing of wire scanner/halo scraper measurements

The Low-Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA), assembled and operating at Los Alamos National Laboratory, provides the platform for obtaining measurements of high-power proton beam-halo formation. Control system software and hardware have been integrated and customized to enable the production of real-time beam-halo profiles. The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) hosted on a VXI platform, Interactive Data Language (IDL) programs hosted on UNIX platforms, and LabVIEW (LV) Virtual Instruments hosted on a PC platform have been integrated and customized to provide real-time, synchronous motor control, data acquisition, and data analysis of data acquired through specialized DSP instrumentation. These modules communicate through EPICS Channel Access (CA) communication protocol extensions to control and manage execution flow ensuring synchronous data acquisition and real-time processing of measurement data. This paper describes the software integration and management scheme implemented to produce these real-time beam profiles.

Performance of the beam phase measurement system for LEDA

The Low Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA) facility diagnostics include beam phase measurements [1]. Beam signals at 350 MHz from capacitive probes are down-converted to 2 MHz for processing. The phase measurement process includes amplitude leveling, digital sampling of the I and Q vectors, DSP filtering and calibration, and serving of the data to the network. All hardware is fielded in the VXI format and controlled with a PC. Running under Windows NT, a LabVIEW® program controls the operation of the system and serves the data, via channel access, to the EPICS control system. The design and operational performance to date of the system is described.