Upgrade of a kicker control system for the HIRFL

Abstract

A kicker system plays an important role in beam extraction and injection for a ring-like accelerator. The kicker system in the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL) is used for beam extraction and injection between two cooling storage rings (CSRs). The system consists of two parts: one part is used for beam extraction from the CSR/main (CSRm), and the other is used for beam injection into the CSR/experimental (CSRe). To meet the requirements of special physics experiments, we upgraded the kicker control system. In this upgraded system, the position of the beam bunches can be determined by measuring the phase of the radio frequency (RF) signal in real time because each beam bunch is synchronized with the RF signal. The digital timing control and delay regulatory function, which are based on a new design using ARM+DSP+FPGA technology, achieved a precision of 2.5ns, which is a significant improvement over old system's precision of 5ns. In addition, this system exhibits a better anti-interference capability. Moreover, the efficiency of beam extraction can be enhanced, and the accuracy of the reference voltage setting can reach as low as 0.1%, compared to 2% for the old system.