RHIC transverse injection damping

Since the beginning of the currently ongoing RHIC run a transverse injection damper is available. The damper is based on a fast kicker module in combination with a HV power supply and fast HV switches. This system can damp one injected bunch at the time with a given kick amplitude ("bang-bang mode") for several hundred turns. This report gives an overview of the injection damping system and summarizes its performance and our experience during the first months of usage.

Introduction

The damper module used for the RHIC injection damper is based on a VME board originally designed for the AGS damping system with a programmable FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) [1]. The existing fast transverse kickers [2], which are currently used for the RHIC tune measurement system [3] serve also for the injection damper. Since only used at injection, the kicker hardware including power supply and fast HV switches is shared. With this system one single bunch can be damped at the time only.