FPGA technology application in a fast measurement and control system for the TESLA superconducting cavity of a FLASH free electron laser

Abstract

Contemporary basic research in physics, biology, chemistry, pharmacology, material technology and other branches uses methods based on sample penetration (and the effect measurement) with pulsed ultra-short EM waves of very high beam intensity. This paper is an overview of a free electron laser (FEL) used in such methods. A method for the stabilization of the EM field in a superconducting ‘TESLA’ cavity accelerator for electrons is presented. This requires precise measurements of the field. The SC accelerator is a basic part of the FEL. The given example concerns the FLASH machine in DESY. The presented, high power EM field stabilization system is based on FPGA circuits with embedded fast hardware multiplication blocks. Examples of a few families of such new generation practically designed and constructed system realizations are given. The system is referred to as the SIMCON (from the microwave superconducting cavity SIMulator and CONtroller). SIMCONs consist of either single-module, multi-module configurable or multichannel distributed units. The SIMCON system stabilizes the EM field by a very fast feedback loop with an adaptation process, supplemented with a feed-forward. The following are presented: a parametric hardware description (firmware) in the form of behavioural VHDL algorithms; implementation results in VirtexIIPro circuits; examples of measurements of high power EM field stability performed under the nominal conditions of accelerator work.