Beam position correction in the Fermilab linac

Orbit correction has long been an essential feature of circular accelerators, storage rings, multipass linacs, and linear colliders. In a drift tube linear accelerator (DTL) such as the H- Linac at Fermilab, beam position monitors (BPMs) and dipole corrector magnets can only be located in between accelerating tanks. Within a tank many drift tubes (from 20 to 60) each house a quadrupole magnet to provide strong transverse focusing of the beam. With good alignment of the drift tubes and quadrupoles and a sufficiently large diameter for the drift tubes, beam position is not typically a major concern. In the Fermilab DTL, 95% of the beam occupies only 35% of the available physical aperture (4.4 cm). The recent upgrade of the Fermilab Linac from a final energy of 200 MeV to 400 MeV has been achieved by replacing four 201.25 MHz drift tube linac tanks with seven 805 MHz side-coupled cavity modules (the high energy portion of the linac or HEL). In order to achieve this increase in energy within the existing enclosure, an accelerating gradient is required that is a factor of 3 larger than that found in the DTL. This in turn required that the physical aperture through whichmore » the beam must pass be significantly reduced. In addition, the lattice of the side-coupled structure provides significantly less transverse focusing than the DTL. Therefore in the early portion of the HEL the beam occupies over 95% of the available physical aperture (3.0 cm). In order to prevent beam loss and the creation of excess radiation, the ability to correct beam position throughout the HEL is of importance. An orbit smoothing algorithm commonly used in the correction of closed orbits of circular machines has been implemented to achieve a global least-squares minimization of beam position errors. In order to accommodate several features of this accelerator a refinement in the algorithm has been made to increase its robustness and utilize correctors of varying strengths.« less