Beam Based RF Voltage Measurements and Longitudinal Beam Tomography at the Fermilab Booster

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel beam-based method for RF voltage measurement and longitudinal beam tomography at Fermilab's Booster, providing detailed insights crucial for future upgrades and performance improvements.

Contribution

It presents the first implementation of beam-based RF voltage measurements and longitudinal beam tomography at the Fermilab Booster, enhancing understanding of its operational parameters.

Findings

Successful RF voltage measurements using beam-based methods.

Longitudinal beam tomography data at injection and extraction energies.

Method applicable to accelerators without flat-bottom and flat-top magnetic ramps.

Abstract

Increasing proton beam power on neutrino production targets is one of the major goals of the Fermilab long term accelerator programs. In this effort, the Fermilab 8 GeV Booster synchrotron plays a critical role for at least the next two decades. Therefore, understanding the Booster in great detail is important as we continue to improve its performance. For example, it is important to know accurately the available RF power in the Booster by carrying out beam-based measurements in order to specify the needed upgrades to the Booster RF system. Since the Booster magnetic field is changing continuously measuring/calibrating the RF voltage is not a trivial task. Here, we present a beam based method for the RF voltage measurements. Data analysis is carried out using computer programs developed in Python and MATLAB. The method presented here is applicable to any RCS which do not have flat-bottom and flat-top in the acceleration magnetic ramps. We have also carried out longitudinal beam tomography at injection and extraction energies with the data used for RF voltage measurements. Beam based RF voltage measurements and beam tomography were never done before for the Fermilab Booster. The results from these investigations will be very useful in future intensity upgrades.