U.S. Particle Accelerator School
Microwave Measurements and Beam Instrumentation Laboratory at Jefferson Lab
Sponsoring University:
Old Dominion University
Course Name:
Microwave Measurements and Beam Instrumentation Laboratory at Jefferson Lab
This class is limited to 20 students and will be held on the Jefferson Lab campus. Students must be 1) a U.S. citizen or 2) already in the U.S. with either a valid work or student visa or 3) have a B1 or WB visa. Attendance using a tourist (B2 or WT) visa is not permitted. Non-US citizens will have to register at JLab and present their passports and visas on the first day of class. There are also some citizenship restrictions, please contact the USPAS Office at uspas@fnal.gov for more information or If you have questions about your eligibility.
Students must complete on-line safety training modules before the first day of class. A radiation worker training class may also be required in order to participate in the experiment where the students test a superconducting cavity.
Instructors:
Frank Marhauser, John Musson, Tomasz Plawski, Tom Powers and Haipeng Wang, Jefferson Lab
Purpose and Audience
Modern accelerators rely on beam manipulation using electromagnetic fields at microwave frequencies. This laboratory course introduces the student to some of the RF and microwave technology and laboratory methods for its characterization. The course consists of short lectures introducing the topics covered in the laboratory exercises. Students will spend most of their time on actual measurements.
Prerequisites
Undergraduate Electromagnetism and the USPAS course “Accelerator Fundamentals”.
It is the responsibility of the student to ensure that they meet the course prerequisites or have equivalent experience.
Objectives
Provide the student with experience in measurements of RF and microwave accelerator hardware and signals using modern test equipment.
Instructional Method
This course includes a series of lectures introducing fundamental concepts of microwave theory and the lab topics during morning sessions, and extensive lab sessions to demonstrate theoretical concepts.
These hand-on labs include:
(1) Spectrum Analyzer: for measurement of simple signals on a spectrum analyzer to understand resolution bandwidth, video bandwidth, dynamic range, noise, etc;
(2) Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR): measure characteristics of various connector families, transmission lines and complex loads;
(3) Beam Impedance: use the wire method to measure the beam impedance of an accelerator component;
(4) Beam Signals: utilize an arbitrary function generator to simulate beam signals from the accelerator, AM for betatron signals, FM for synchrotron signals;
(5) Pickups and kickers: measure and understand to performance of a stripline used as either a beam pickup or kicker;
(6) Matching: design and build a simple single stub transmission line matching circuit;
(7) RF Cavities: measure mode spectrums of a cavity, the cavity coupling, loaded and unloaded Q, the electric field distribution and R/Q of a cavity by the bead pull method.
(8) Perform RF parameter measurements of superconducting cavity when operated near critical coupling at 2K.
(9) Linac structure: measure mode spectrums of coupled cavities, loaded and unloaded Q; identify and understand the coupled modes and phase advance between cavities.
(10) Use of a vector signal analyzer for measuring beam signals and the properties of various microwave components.
Course Content
(1) Microwave Measurements in the time and frequency domains, basics of spectrum analyzers, vector signal analyzers, and time domain reflectometers;
(2) Basics properties of microwave components such as amplifiers, mixers, directional couplers, filters, and circulators.
(3) Transmission lines, complex impedance, reflection coefficients;
(4) Microwave measurements with a Vector Network Analyzer, basics of vector network analyzers;
(5) Stripline pickups and kickers.
(6) AM/FM/PM Modulation and how it relates to beam spectrums, power spectral density, betatron and synchrotron signals;
(7) RF structure beam impedance and methods for measuring it.
(8) Impedance matching, basic of matching devices; and
(9) RF cavity and linac structure measurements, cavity and coupled cavity structure basics, bead pull, coupling, cavity bandwidth, microphonics, Qo as a function of gradient and sources of errors and higher order modes.
Reading Requirements
(to be provided by the USPAS) “Microwave Engineering” by David Pozar (fourth edition), John Wiley and Sons Publishers (2011). The course will follow our notes which will be available on-line.
Credit Requirements
Students will be evaluated based on performance in the laboratory. Instructors will be actively involved with each of the students during the course of each day and each experiment. The students will be evaluated by one on one discussions about the experiments. Students are expected to submit written lab reports and solutions to the homework assignments.
Old Dominion University course number: Phys 658, "Microwave Measurement & Beam Instrumentation Lab"
Indiana University course number: Physics 571, "Special Topics in Physics of Beams"
Michigan State University course number: PHY 963, "U.S. Particle Accelerator School"
MIT course number: 8.790, "Accelerator Physics"