Digital control of cavity fields in the spallation neutron source superconducting linac

Control of the pulsed RF cavity fields in the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) superconducting Linac uses both the real-time feedback regulation and the pulse-to-pulse adaptive feed-forward compensation. This control combination is required to deal with the typical issues associated with superconducting cavities, such as the Lorentz force detuning, mechanical resonance modes, and cavity filling. The all-digital implementation of this system provides the capabilities and flexibility necessary for achieving the required performance, and to accommodate the needs of various control schemes. The low-latency design of the digital hardware has successfully produced a wide control bandwidth, and the developed adaptive feed forward algorithms have proved to be essential for the controlled cavity filling, the suppression of the cavity mechanical resonances, and the beam loading compensation. As of this time, all 96 LLRF systems throughout the Linac have been commissioned and are in operation.