Achievements and New Challenges for CERN's Digital LLRF Family

TL;DR

CERN's digital LLRF family has significantly improved control and diagnostics for multiple accelerators, with ongoing upgrades to enhance performance and address new challenges during LS2.

Contribution

This paper presents the development, deployment, and upgrade plans of CERN's innovative digital LLRF systems across several accelerator facilities.

Findings

Successful implementation on PSB, LEIR, and ELENA.

Enhanced beam control and diagnostics capabilities.

Upcoming upgrades for HLRF systems during LS2.

Abstract

An innovative digital Low-Level RF (LLRF) family has been developed at CERN and deployed on several circular machines. Operation of CERN's PS Booster (PSB), Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) and Extra Low ENergy Antiproton (ELENA) ring all reaped great benefit from the flexibility and processing power of this new family. Beam and cavity feedback loops have been implemented, as well as bunch shaping, longitudinal blowup and bunch splitting. For ELENA, longitudinal diagnostics such as bunched beam intensity and bunch length measurements have also been deployed. During Long Shutdown 2 (LS2) the ferrite-based High-Level RF (HLRF) systems of the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) and of the four-ring PSB will be replaced with Finemet-based HLRF. This will require a new LLRF system for the AD and deep upgrades to the existing PSB LLRF systems. This paper gives an overview of the main results achieved by the digital LLRF family so far and of the challenges the LLRF team will take on during LS2.