LHC beam instrumentation has made an important contribution to the success of the initial LHC commissioning and its subsequent efficient operation; in line with the saying that "an accelerator can only be as good as its diagnostics". The new challenges imposed by the LHC machine required important advances to be made in several areas of beam instrumentation. This could only be fully achieved through collaboration, using the knowledge and experience of scientists and engineers from many different laboratories. One such challenge was the LHC tune measurement system, requiring the observation of beam oscillations with micrometre amplitudes. This resulted in the development of a technique called Direct Diode Detection (3D), which recently earned the Faraday Cup Award at the US Beam Instrumentation Workshop (BIW12) as "an innovative beam diagnostic instrument of proven workability". This seminar will describe the motivation and the history behind this development, from the early adventures of 3D prototyping through collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory to its final implementation here at CERN as the Base-Band Tune (BBQ) systems. Some of the early tests of the 3D technique involved recording signals of beam motion as sound files and a few of these will be played during the presentation to demonstrate another angle for understanding particle beam dynamics.
ATS Seminars
Organisers: H. Burkhardt (BE), S. Sgobba (EN), G. deRijk (TE)
