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The installation of Linac4 has started in 2013 with the 3 MeV Front End, aiming at delivering a fully commissioned 160 MeV H^{−} beam by 2016. During summer 2013 the H^{−} ion source, a clone of the first prototype, and the Low Energy Beam Transport lines have been installed in the Linac4 tunnel followed shortly by the Radiofrequency Quadrupole accelerator (RFQ), operating at the RF frequency of 352.2 MHz and which accelerates the ion beam to the energy of 3 MeV. The RFQ, which had already been commissioned at the 3 MeV Test Stand, was this time driven by a fully digital LLRF system. This paper reports the result of the bead-pull field check performed after the installation in the tunnel, the experience gained during recommissioning and the results of field characterization as a function of the water temperature in the RFQ cooling channels, showing how the accelerating field can be adjusted by simply tuning the different cavity modules.

A high-harmonic RF system that could serve multiple purposes was proposed for the LHC. Possible applications of the second harmonic RF system include beam stabilisation in the longitudinal plane in the absence of wide-band longitudinal feedback and reduction of bunch peak line-density. Apart from other useful features, flat bunches are expected to produce less beam-induced heating at frequencies below 1 GHz, the frequency region critical for some LHC equipment. The latter, however, can also be achieved by de-populating the bunch centre. This was demonstrated during the dedicated machine development session in the LHC using RF phase modulation. In this paper the results of tests with single bunches and nominal LHC beams are presented and the possible use of this technique in LHC operation is discussed., Proceedings of the 5th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2014, Dresden, Germany

Linac4 is a new 86-m long normal-conducting linear accelerator that will provide 160 MeV H^{−} to the CERN PS Booster (PSB), and replace the present 50 MeV proton Linac2. The Low Level RF (LLRF) system has to control the RFQ, two choppers, three bunching cavities, twenty two accelerating cavities and one debuncher in the transfer line to the PSB. To optimize the transfer into the 1 MHz PSB bucket, the machine includes fast choppers (synchronized with the PSB RF) and a voltage modulation of the last two cavities that will provide Longitudinal Painting for optimum filling. The commissioning in the tunnel with beam has started in October 2013. So far the part consisting of the RFQ, the three bunching cavities, and the first DTL is operational. The rest of the machine will be progressively commissioned till end 2015. The paper presents the LLRF system. First results from the commissioning (with a prototype regulation system) are shown and the more sophisticated algorithms under development are presented.

The LHC ACS RF system is composed of 16 superconducting cavities, eight per ring, housed in a total of four cryomodules each containing four cavities. Each cavity is powered by a 300 kW klystron. The ACS RF power control system is based on industrial Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), but with additional fast RF interlock protection systems. Operational performance and reliability are described. A full set of user interfaces, both for experts and operators has been developed, with user feedback and maintenance issues as key points. Operational experience with the full RF chain, including the low level system, the beam control, the synchronisation system and optical fibres distribution is presented. Last but not least overall performance and reliability based on experience with beam are reviewed and perspectives for future improvement outlined., Proceedings of the 1st International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2010, Kyoto, Japan

The LHC Low Level RF system (LLRF) is a complex multi-loop system used to regulate the superconductive cavity gap voltage as well as to reduce the impedance presented by RF stations to the beam. The RF system can have a profound impact on the stability of the beam; a mis-configured RF system has the potential of causing longitudinal instabilities, beam diffusion and beam loss. To configure the RF station for operation, a set of parameters in the LLRF multi-loop system have to be defined. Initial system commissioning as well as ongoing operation requires a consistent method of computer based remote measurement and model-based design of each RF station feedback system. This paper describes the suite of Matlab tools used for configuring the LHC RF system during the start up in Nov2009-Feb2010. We present a brief overview of the tool, examples of commissioning results, and basics of the model-based design algorithms. This work complements our previous presentation [1], where the algorithms and methodology followed in the tools were described., Proceedings of the 1st International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2010, Kyoto, Japan

Radio Frequency (RF) accelerating system noise and non-idealities can have detrimental impact on the LHC performance through longitudinal motion and longitudinal emittance growth. A theoretical formalism has been developed to relate the beam and RF loop dynamics with the bunch length growth [1]. Measurements were conducted at LHC to validate the formalism, determine the performance limiting RF components, and provide the foundation for beam diffusion estimates for higher energies and intensities. A brief summary of these results is presented in this work., Proceedings of the 1st International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2010, Kyoto, Japan

The LHC RF consists of eight 400 MHz superconducting cavities per ring, with each cavity independently powered by a 300 kW klystron, via a circulator. The challenge for the Low Level is to cope with very high beam current (more than 1 A RF component) and achieve excellent beam lifetime (emittance growth time in excess of 25 hours). Each cavity has an associated Cavity Controller rack consisting of two VME crates which implement high gain RF Feedback, a Tuner Loop with a new algorithm, a Klystron Ripple Loop and a Conditioning system. In addition each ring has a Beam Control system (four VME crates) which includes a Frequency Program, Phase Loop, Radial Loop and Synchronization Loop. A Longitudinal Damper (dipole and quadrupole mode) acting via the 400 MHz cavities is included to reduce emittance blow-up due to filamentation from phase and energy errors at injection. Finally an RF Synchronization system implements the bunch into bucket transfer from the SPS into each LHC ring. When fully installed in 2007, the whole system will count over three hundred home-designed VME cards of twenty-three different models installed in forty-five VME crates. The paper presents the various loops: it outlines the expected performances, summarizes the algorithms and the implementation. Thanks to a full scale test set-up including klystron and cavity we have measured the response of the RF Feedback and Tuner Loop; and these will be presented and compared to the expectations.

Following the high integrated luminosity accumulated in the first two Pb-Pb collision runs in 2010 and 2011, the LHC heavy-ion physics community requested a first run with p-Pb collisions. This almost unprecedented mode of collider operation was not foreseen in the baseline design of the LHC whose two-in-one magnet design imposed equal rigidity and, hence, unequal revolution frequencies, during injection and ramp. Nevertheless, after a successful pilot physics fill in 2012, the LHC provided of p-Pb luminosity per experiment, at an energy of 5.02 TeV per colliding nucleon pair, with several variations of the operating conditions, in early 2013. Together with a companion p-p run at 2.76 TeV, this was the last physics before the present long shutdown. We summarise the beam physics, operational adaptations and strategy that resulted in extremely rapid commissioning. Finally, we give an account of the progress of the run and provide an analysis of the performance.

In the framework of the LHC Injector Upgrade (LIU) project the radio-frequency (RF) systems of the synchrotrons in the LHC injector chain will undergo significant improvements to reach the high beam intensity and quality required by the High-Luminosity (HL) LHC. Following the recent upgrade of the longitudinal beam control system in the PS Booster (PSB), tests with Finemet cavities are being performed in view of a complete replacement of the existing RF systems in the PSB by ones based on this technology. In the PS a similar wide-band Finemet cavity has been installed as a longitudinal damper. New 1-turn delay feedbacks on the main accelerating cavities to reduce their impedance have also been commissioned. Additional feedback and beam control improvements are foreseen. A major upgrade of the main RF system in the SPS by regrouping sections of its travelling wave cavities, increasing the number of cavities from four to six, will reduce beam-loading and allow higher intensities to be accelerated. The upgrade includes the installation of two new RF power plants and new feedback systems. All upgrades will be evaluated with respect to their expected benefits for the beams to the LHC.

Since June 2011 the rapid increase of the luminosity performance of the LHC has come at the expense of both increased temperature and pressure of specific, near-beam, LHC equipment. In some cases, this beam induced heating has caused delays while equipment cool-down, beam dumps and even degradation of some devices. This contribution gathers the observations of beam induced heating, attributed to longitudinal beam coupling impedance, their current level of understanding and possible actions planned to be implemented during the 1st LHC Long Shutdown (LS1) in 2013-2014.

This contribution presents an overview of the open questions on the key operational aspects and performance figures of the LHC during Run 3 and HL-LHC era, which could be tackled and answered in the current Run 2.

Linac4 is a normal conducting 160 MeV H⁻ linear accelerator presently being installed and progressively commissioned at CERN. It will replace the ageing 50 MeV Linac2 as injector of the PS Booster (PSB), increasing at the same time its brightness by a factor of two thanks to the higher injection energy. This will be the first step of a program to increase the beam intensity in the LHC injectors for the needs of the High-Luminosity LHC project. After a series of beam measurements on a dedicated test stand the 3 MeV Linac4 front-end, including ion source, RFQ and a beam chopping line, has been recommissioned at its final position in the Linac4 tunnel. Commissioning of the following section, the Drift Tube Linac, is starting. Beam commissioning will take place in steps of increasing energy, to reach the final 160 MeV in 2015. An extended beam measurement phase including testing of stripping equipment for the PSB and a year-long test run to assess and improve Linac4 reliability will take place in 2016, prior to the connection of Linac4 to the PSB that will take place during the next long LHC shut-down., Proceedings of the 5th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2014, Dresden, Germany

In Particle Accelerators, the Low-Level RF (LLRF) is the control system of the RF, and in the end, of the purpose of the machine, that is the energy transfer and acceleration of particles. It implements algorithms synchronizing the RF conveying the energy to the beam and tailoring its longitudinal parameters. For this, the LLRF uses beam-related signals whose spectral content changes during the acceleration. The increase in energy results in an increase of the beam velocity, and for circular accelerators (Synchrotrons) a decrease in revolution period. This is especially relevant for Hadron machines whose injection energy is low resulting in a significant increase of their velocity before reaching relativistic speeds. Hence, the LLRF needs to continuously tune its processing to the beam; we call this technique Beam Synchronous Processing. One important task of the LLRF is the compensation of the beam-induced voltage in the accelerating cavities (Beam Loading). In the CERN SPS the regulation bandwidth must cover 5 MHz on each side of the 200 MHz RF. With a beam revolution period around 23 µs more than a hundred revolution frequency harmonics, present in the beam signal, fall in the RF sidebands. The variation in beam velocity changes the position and spacing of the harmonics in the spectrum. The large number of harmonics and their varying positions make the algorithm reconfiguration an undesirable option. To cope with this, the early digital implementations used a system clock derived from the sweeping RF. This locks the sampling and the processing to the beam, by design. This historical solution, that is still in use in several machines, is now a limiting factor for the use of modern technologies. The Thesis presents a novel Beam Synchronous Processing Architecture, using a fixed frequency clocking, and capable of treating periodic signals with known and varying fundamental frequency. The Architecture is an alternative to the burden of reconfiguration in processing algorithms; it tunes the spectrum to the processing by resampling the input data. Two Resamplers are combined in the so-called resampling sandwich. The application algorithm requiring synchronism with the input signal is placed in the middle. The key element is a novel All-Digital Farrow-based Resampler, that accepts arbitrary resampling ratios that can be modified in real-time. The hardware uses a single fixed frequency system clock, making its implementation feasible in State-Of-the-Art FPGAs, ASICs and systems such as the new uTCA platform currently being deployed in the CERN SPS LLRF system. The input and output ports of the Resampler, and all the processing within the Architecture, are synchronous to this fixed frequency clock and accept data streams whose sampling rate can be variable and modified in real time. The Architecture has been commissioned in a LLRF uTCA crate hosting the One Turn FeedBack algorithm to control a real SPS cavity. The algorithm compensates the Beam Loading. The Architecture has demonstrated its capability to track in real-time an energy ramp with an RF frequency following a linear sawtooth pattern ramped at 2.4 MHz per second. The complete uTCA implementation has successfully passed all the functional validation and qualitative tests. The Architecture suits seamless the two technological paradigm changes adopted for the new CERN SPS LLRF system; first, the instantaneous value of the RF frequency is transmitted as a numerical word (used to set the resampling ratio), via a deterministic network, the White Rabbit. And second, the reference signal is now the fixed frequency clock recovered from this network. Both paradigms benefit from the all-digital Resampler and the Beam Synchronous Architecture that fulfil the techniques and technological needs for its implementation enabling novel LLRF algorithms and solutions. En un Acelerador de Partículas, el Low Level RF (LLRF) es el sistema de control de la RF, e implícitamente, de la transferencia de energía y aceleración de partículas, objetivo último de la máquina. El LLRF implementa algoritmos que sincronizan la transferencia de energía de RF hacia el haz, y controla sus parámetros longitudinales. Usa señales del haz, cuyo contenido espectral se modifica con la aceleración. El incremento en energía implica un incremento en velocidad del haz que, para aceleradores circulares (Sincrotrones), resulta en un decremento del periodo de revolución. Esto es relevante en aceleradores de Hadrones, en los cuales la baja energía de inyección favorece grandes incrementos de velocidad antes de alcanzar valores relativistas. El LLRF necesita por tanto sintonizar continuamente el procesado y el haz (Beam Synchronous Processing). Una misión del LLRF es la compensación de la tensión inducida por el haz en cavidades aceleradoras (Beam Loading). En el sincrotrón SPS del CERN, el ancho de banda de regulación cubre 5 MHz a cada lado de la RF (200 MHz). Con un periodo de revolución de aproximadamente 23 µs, más de cien harmónicos de la frecuencia de revolución, presentes en la señal del haz, aparecen en las bandas alrededor de la RF. La variación en velocidad del haz cambia la posición y espaciado de estos harmónicos en el espectro. Su número y posición cambiante hacen una opción poco deseable la reconfiguración en algoritmos de control. La solución histórica es un reloj de sistema derivado de la RF, por tanto variable, que liga por diseño el muestreo y procesado al haz. Aún en uso en varias máquinas, este reloj es ahora un factor limitante para el uso de nuevas tecnologías. Esta Tesis presenta una nueva Arquitectura para Tratamiento Síncrono de Señales derivadas del Haz, mediante un reloj de sistema con frecuencia fija, que posibilita el tratamiento de señales periódicas en las que el harmónico fundamental tiene una frecuencia variable y conocida. La Arquitectura es una alternativa válida al problema de reconfiguración de algoritmos de procesado; sintoniza el espectro al procesado mediante el re-muestreo de los datos. Dos Re-muestreadores (Resamplers) son combinados en el denominada sándwich de re-muestreo. El algoritmo requiriendo sincronismo con el haz, se sitúa en medio de este sándwich. El elemento clave es un novedoso Resampler digital que acepta relaciones de re-muestreo arbitrarias y modificables en tiempo real. El hardware usa un único reloj de sistema de frecuencia fija, facilitando la implementación en FPGAs, ASICs y sistemas de última generación, como los controladores uTCA en los sistemas LLRF del SPS en el CERN. Los puertos de entrada y salida del Resampler, y todo el procesado en la Arquitectura, son síncronos a este reloj, y aceptan señales con una frecuencia de muestreo variable en tiempo real.La Arquitectura ha sido implementada en un controlador uTCA de una cavidad del SPS albergando el algoritmo One Turn FeedBack. El algoritmo compensa el Beam Loading. La Arquitectura demuestra ser viable operando sintonizada a una rampa de aceleración del haz, con una RF cuya frecuencia varia linealmente a 2.4 MHz por segundo siguiendo un patrón en diente de sierra. La implementación de la Arquitectura ha pasado toda la validación funcional y test cualitativos. La Arquitectura se adapta de manera sin igual a dos cambios de paradigma tecnológico adoptados por el LLRF del SPS; primero, la distribución del valor instantáneo de la frecuencia de RF es ahora hecho mediante una palabra digital con una red determinista, White Rabbit. Y segundo, la señal de referencia es ahora un reloj con frecuencia fija extraído de esta red. La adopción de ambos paradigmas se ve beneficiada por el uso de la Arquitectura y Resampler, que satisfacen los requerimientos técnicos y tecnológicos para la implementación de nuevos algoritmos y soluciones LLRF. Dans le monde des Accélérateurs de Particules, le Low-Level RF (LLRF) est le système de contrôle de la RF et, in-fine, du transfert d'énergie et de l'accélération des particules. Il met en oeuvre des algorithmes synchronisant la RF transférant l'énergie au faisceau et adaptant ses paramètres longitudinaux. Pour cela, le LLRF utilise des signaux liés au faisceau dont le contenu spectral est modifié par l'accélération. L'augmentation d'énergie se traduit par une augmentation de la vitesse du faisceau, et pour les accélérateurs circulaires (Synchrotrons), une diminution de la période de révolution. Cela est particulièrement pertinent pour les machines à Hadrons dont l’énergie d’injection est faible, avec la conséquence d’une augmentation significative de leur vitesse durant l’accélération. Le LLRF doit donc ajuster en permanence son traitement au faisceau ; nous appelons cette exigence Beam Synchronous Processing. Une tâche importante du LLRF est la compensation de la tension induite par le faisceau (Beam Loading). Dans le SPS au CERN, la régulation couvre 5 MHz de chaque côté de la RF (200 MHz). Avec une période de révolution autour de 23 μs, plus d'une centaine d’harmoniques de fréquence de révolution, présentes dans le spectre du faisceau, tombent dans la bande +- 5 MHz. La variation de vitesse du faisceau modifie la position et l'espacement des harmoniques dans le spectre. Le grand nombre de raies spectrales et leur position variable font de la reconfiguration de l'algorithme une option indésirable. Les solutions digitales existantes ont donc préféré changer l’horloge d’échantillonnage : Celle-ci est verrouillée sur la RF, ce qui synchronise par conception l'échantillonnage et le traitement du faisceau. Cette solution historique, toujours en usage dans plusieurs machines, est aujourd'hui un facteur limitant pour les technologies modernes. La Thèse présente une nouvelle Architecture de traitement synchrone de faisceau, utilisant une horloge fixe, et capable de traiter des signaux périodiques de fréquence fondamentale connue et possiblement variable. L'Architecture apporte une alternative au fardeau de la reconfiguration dans les algorithmes ; il ajuste le spectre au traitement en rééchantillonnant les données d'entrée. Deux Rééchantillonneurs ont été combinés dans le sandwich de rééchantillonnage. L'algorithme d'application nécessitant un synchronisme avec le signal d'entrée est placé au milieu. L'élément clé est un nouveau Ré-échantillonneur entièrement numérique basé sur une architecture Farrow, qui accepte des taux de rééchantillonnage arbitraires pouvant également être modifiés en temps réel. L’implémentation utilise une seule horloge système à fréquence fixe, ce qui rend sa mise en œuvre possible dans les FPGA, ASIC et systèmes de pointe comme la nouvelle plate-forme uTCA actuellement déployée dans le SPS du CERN. L’entrée et la sortie du Ré-échantillonneur, et tout le traitement dans l'Architecture, sont synchrones avec cette horloge et acceptent un taux d’échantillonnage variable que peut être modifiée en temps réel. L'Architecture a été déployée dans un châssis uTCA hébergeant l'algorithme One Turn FeedBack pour contrôler une véritable cavité SPS. L'algorithme compense le Beam Loading. L'Architecture a démontré sa capacité à suivre en temps réel une rampe d'énergie avec une fréquence RF suivant une modulation en dent de scie, à 2.4 MHz par seconde. L’implémentation complète sur uTCA a passé avec succès les tests de validation fonctionnelle et qualitative. L'Architecture convient parfaitement aux deux paradigmes technologiques adoptés pour le nouveau système LLRF du SPS ; premièrement, la valeur instantanée de la fréquence RF est transmise sous forme de mot numérique (qui donnera le taux de rééchantillonnage), via un réseau déterministe, le White Rabbit. Et deuxièmement, le signal de référence est maintenant l'horloge à fréquence fixe récupérée de ce réseau. La solution présentée respecte ces deux paradigmes grâce au Réchantillonneur entièrement numérique et à l'horloge fixe. Ciència i enginyeria de materials