Booster's coupled bunch damper upgrade

A new narrowband active damping system for longitudinal coupled bunch (CB) modes in the Fermilab Booster has recently been installed and tested. In the past, the Booster active damper system consisted of four independent front-ends. The summed output was distributed to the 18, h=84 RF accelerating cavities via the RF fan-out system. There were several problems using the normal fan-out system to deliver the longitudinal feedback RF. The high power RF amplifiers normally operate from 37 MHz to 53 MHz whereas the dampers operate around 83MHz. Daily variations in the tuning of the RF stations created tuning problems for the longitudinal damper system. The solution was to build a dedicated narrowband, Q {approx} 10, 83MHz cavity powered with a new 3.5kW solid-state amplifier. The cavity was installed in June 2002 and testing of the amplifier and damper front-end began in August 2002. A significant improvement has been made in both operational stability and high intensity beam damping. At present there are five CB modes being damped and a sixth mode module is being built. The new damper hardware is described and data showing the suppression of the coupled-bunch motion at high intensity is presented