• M.J. Wissmann, AA. Guerra, C. Hovater, T. Plawski
  Jefferson Lab, Newport News, Virginia

The CEBAF energy upgrade from 6 GeV to 12GeV will increase the range of beam energies available to the experimental halls. RF deflection cavities (separators) are used to direct the electron beam to the three experimental halls. Consequently with the increase in RF separator cavity gradient needed for the higher energies, RF power will also increase requiring the cavities to have active resonance control. At the 6 GeV energy, the cavities are tuned mechanically and then stabilized with Low Conductivity Water (LCW), which is maintained at constant temperature of 95o Fahrenheit. This is no longer feasible and an active resonance control system, that controls both water temperature and flow has been built. The system uses a commercial PLC with embedded PID controls to control water temperature and flow to the cavities. The system allows the operator to remotely adjust temperature/flow and consequently cavity resonance for the full range of beam energies. Ultimately closed loop control will be maintained by monitoring the cavities reflected power. This paper describes this system.

• M. Liepe, S.A. Belomestnykh, J. Dobbins, R.P.K. Kaplan, C.R. Strohman, B.K. Stuhl
  Cornell University, Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics, Ithaca, New York
• C. Hovater, T. Plawski
  Jefferson Lab, Newport News, Virginia

The superconducting cavities in an Energy-Recovery-Linac will be operated with a high loaded Q of several 1E7, possible up to 1E8. Not only has no prior control system ever stabilized the RF field in a linac cavity with such high loaded Q, but also highest field stability in amplitude and phase is required at this high loaded Q. Because of a resulting bandwidth of the cavity of only a few Hz, this presents a significant challenge: the field in the cavity extremely sensitive to any perturbation of the cavity resonance frequency due to microphonics and Lorentz force detuning. To prove that the RF field in a high loaded Q cavity can be stabilized, and that Cornell's newly developed digital control system is able to achieve this, the system was connected to a high loaded Q cavity at the JLab IR-FEL. Excellent cw field stability – about 2·10^-4 rms in relative amplitude and 0.03 deg rms in phase - was achieved at a loaded Q of 2.1·10⁷ and 1.4E8, setting a new record in high loaded Q operation of a linac cavity. Piezo tuner based cavity frequency control proved to be very effective in keeping the cavity on resonance and allowed reliable to ramp up to high gradients in less than 1 second.