Machine protection for high average current linacs (original) (raw)

Expansion of the Fast Linac Protection System for High Duty Cycle Operation at the Tesla Test Facility

Proc. Eighth European Particle Accelerator Conference, La Villette – PARIS, 3 - 7 June 2002, 2002

To perform a proof of principle experiment of a SASE based Free Electron Laser operating a permanent magnet undulator has been installed in the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) linac. The type of permanent magnets (NdFeB) used is known to be sensitive to irradiation. Already losses of the order of 10−6 at nominal TTF beam current can cause a degradation of the undulator magnets after a few month of operation. To protect the undulator against radiation a collimation system in front of the undulator removes the electrons with large betatron motion. To detect beam halo or dark current escaping the collimators a beam loss monitor (BLM) system based on photomultiplier has been developed. During the past two years the BLM system has been improved in its electronic components and detectors. It has become a standard tool for linac operation and is now integrated part of the linac protect system. In this paper the design, the operation experiences and the performance limits of the system are presented.

Status of the Machine Protection System for ARIEL e-linac

2018

The Advanced Rare Isotope & Electron Linac (ARIEL) facility at TRIUMF consists of an electron linear accelerator (e-linac) capable of currents up to 10 mA at an energy of 30 MeV, giving a total available beam power of 300 kW. In addition, the e-linac can be run in pulsed operation down to beam pulses of 5 μs, and up to CW. A Machine Protection System (MPS) is required to protect the accelerator from hazardous beam spills and must turn off the electron gun within 10 μs of detection. The MPS consists of two types of beam loss monitors, a front-end beam loss monitor board developed at TRIUMF, and EPICS-based controls to establish operating modes. A trip time of 10 μs has been demonstrated, along with a 106 dynamic range and sensitivity down to 100 pA. This paper is focused on the current status of the beam loss monitor detection system.

Machine Protection Systems and Their Impact on Beam Availability and Accelerator Reliability

Over the last decades, the complexity and performance levels of machine protection have developed. The level of reliability and availability analysis prior to operation differs between facilities, just as the pragmatic changes of the machine protection during operation. This paper studies the experience and development of machine protection for some of the state of the art proton and ion accelerators, and how it relates to reducing damage to and downtime of the machine. The findings are discussed and categorized, with emphasis on proton accelerators. The paper is concluded with some recommendations for a future high power linear proton accelerator.

Adaptable Machine Protection Architecture for CW, High Intensity Accelerators

2015

An adaptable architecture of a machine protection system (MPS) suitable for continuous wave (CW), high intensity accelerators like those proposed for Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) for subcritical reactor strategies and heavy ion accelerators for the production of rare isotopes is presented. A system of databases, networks and nodes that can systematically and flexibly be reconfigured to rebalance the required metadata is used. Additional features include reconfigurable machine setup templates that can rigorously be tested with mirror redundant online backups, the utilization of external reconfigurable geometric algorithms for the data channels and the network distribution, and the inclusion of initial system requirements as well as envisioned upgrades.

Design and Implementation of FPGA Based Protection System for Beam Acceleration in Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator

2019

IFMIF (International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility) Prototype Accelerator (LIPAc) has been developed, which is designed to produce a deuteron CW beam with a current of 125 mA at 9 MeV. After the injector commissioning, the LIPAc is entering in the second commissioning phase in which RFQ, MEBT, RF Power System and Beam Instrumentation (BI) systems have been integrated. The LCSs of LIPAc have been developed by European Home Team (EU-HT) and delivered with its subsystems; the CCS, including personnel and machine protection, timing, archiving and alarming, by Japanese Home Team (JA-HT). These have been implemented on the EPICS platform to mitigate the risk of incompatibility in the integration, which JA-HT and EU-HT are jointly carrying out to control the whole accelerator. In the CCS, some interlocks associated with measurement systems–chopper interlock, protection of BI systems, etc.–are implemented on FPGA and the condition of interlock triggering can be changed from EPICS OP...