A low-cost non-intercepting beam current and phase monitor for heavy ions

A low cost ion beam measurement system has been developed for use at ATLAS. The system provides nondestructive phase and intensity measurement of passing ion beam bunches by sensing their electric fields. Bunches traverse a short tubular electrode thereby inducing displacement currents. These currents are brought outside the vacuum jacket where a lumped inductance resonates electrode capacitance at one of the bunching harmonic frequencies. This configuration yields a basic sensitivity of a few hundred millivolts signal per microampere of beam current. Beam induced radiofrequency signals are summed against an offset frequency generated by the master oscillator. The resulting difference frequency conveys beam intensity and bunch phase information which is sent to separate processing channels. One channel utilizes a phase locked loop to stabilize phase readings during microsecond beam drop outs. The other channel uses a linear full-wave active rectifier circuit which converts sine wave signal amplitude to a DC voltage representing beam current. Plans are in progress to install this new diagnostic at several locations in ATLAS which should help shorten the tuning cycle of new ion species