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In the framework of the compact STorage ring for Accelerator Research and Technology (cSTART) project, which will be realized at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), a Very Large Acceptance compact Storage Ring (VLA-cSR) is planned to study the injection and the storage of 50 MeV, ultra-short (sub-ps) electron bunches from a laser plasma accelerator (LPA) and the linac-based test facility FLUTE. For such a storage ring, where a single bunch with a relatively wide range of bunch charge (1 pC - 1000 pC ) and energy spread (10’4 - 10’2) will circulate at a relatively high revolution frequency (7 MHz), the choice of beam diagnostics is very delicate. In this paper, we would like to discuss several beam diagnostics options for the storage ring and to briefly report on several tests that have been or are planned to be realized in our existing facilities., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

For measuring the temporal profile of the coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) a setup based on electro-optical spectral decoding (EOSD) will be installed as part of the sensor network at the KIT storage ring KARA (Karlsruhe Research Accelerator). The EOSD technique allows a single-shot, phase sensitive measurement of the complete spectrum of the CSR far field radiation at each turn. Therefore, the dynamics of the bunch evolution, e.g. the microbunching, can be observed in detail. Especially, in synchronized combination with the already established near-field EOSD, this method could provide deeper insights in the interplay of bunch profile and CSR generation for each individual electron bunch. For a successful implementation of the EOSD single shot setup, measurements with electro-optical sampling (EOS) are performed. With EOS the THz pulse shape is scanned over several turns by shifting the delay of laser and THz pulse. In this contribution different steps towards the installation of the EOSD far field setup are summarized., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

To understand the underlying complex beam diagnostic often large numbers of single-shot measurements must be acquired continuously over a long time with extremely high temporal resolution. Photonic time-stretch is a measurement method that is able to overcome speed limitations of con- ventional digitizers and enable continuous ultra-fast single- shot terahertz spectroscopy with refresh rates of trillions of consecutive frames. In this contribution, a novel ultra- fast data sampling system based on photonic time-stretch is presented and the performance is discussed. THERESA (TeraHErtz REadout SAmpling) is a data acquisition system based on the recent ZYNQ-RFSoC family. THERESA has been developed with an analog bandwidth up to 20 GHz and a sampling rate up to 90 GS/s. When combined with the photonic time-stretch setup, the system will be able to sample a THz signal with an unprecedented frame rate of 8 TS/s. Continuous acquisition for long observation times will open up new possibilities in the detection of rare events in accelerator physics., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

Modern particle accelerator facilities allow new and exciting beam properties and operation modes. Traditional real-time control systems, albeit powerful, have bandwidth and latency constraints that limit the range of operating conditions currently made available to users. The capability of Reinforcement Learning to perform self-learning control policies by interacting with the accelerator is intriguing. The extreme dynamic conditions require fast real-time feedback throughout the whole control loop from the diagnostic, with novel and intelligent detector systems, all the way to the interaction with the accelerator components. In this contribution, the novel KINGFISHER framework based on the modern Xilinx Versal devices will be presented. Versal combines several computational engines, specifically combining powerful FPGA logic with programmable AI Engines in a single device. Furthermore, this system can be natively integrated with the fastest beam diagnostic tools already available, i.e. KAPTURE and KALYPSO., Proceedings of the 11th International Beam Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2022, Kraków, Poland

Coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) is emitted when the emitting structure is equal to or smaller than the observed wavelength. Consequently, these pulses are very short and most detectors respond with their impulse response, regardless of the pulse length and shape. Here we present single-shot measurements performed at the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA) using a fast real-time oscilloscope and Schottky barrier detectors sensitive in the sub-THz range. The time response of this setup to CSR pulses emitted by electron bunches during the microbunching instability is shown to be sensitive to the shape of the electron bunch. Our results show how, in the future, the shape of electron bunches can be directly measured using a straightforward setup., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

In the booster synchrotron of the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA), the beam is injected from the microtron at 53 MeV and ramped up to 500 MeV. Though the injected beam current from the microtron to the booster seems good, the injection efficiency into the booster is currently low due to various effects. Consequently, an upgrade of the whole beam diagnostics system is taking place in the booster, in order to improve the injection efficiency through understanding the loss mechanisms and the behavior of bunches. Among these diagnostics tools are beam loss monitors, a transverse profile monitor and a longitudinal profile monitor. In this paper, we will describe the setups used for bunch profile measurements in both transverse and longitudinal planes and report on first data analysis results., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

For measuring the temporal profile of the coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) at the KIT storage ring KARA (Karlsruhe Research Accelerator) an experimental setup based on electro-optical spectral decoding (EOSD) is currently being implemented. The EOSD technique allows single-shot, phase-sensitive measurements of the far-field radiation on a turn-by-turn basis at rates in the MHz range. Therefore, the resulting THz radiation from the dynamics of the bunch evolution, e.g. the microbunching, can be observed with high temporal resolution. This far-field setup is part of the distributed sensor network at KARA. Additionally to the information acquired from the near-field EOSD spectral decoding and the horizontal bunch profile monitor, it enables to monitor the longitudinal phase-space of the bunch. In this contribution, the characterization of the far-field setup is summarized and its implementation is discussed., Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil

Electron beam microbunching instabilities can present operational limits on the practical operation of storage ring accelerators. In the present work, we outline components of a synchrotron radiation diagnostic beamline for the Advanced Photon Source Particle Accumulator Ring operating at frequencies up to approximately 1 THz., Proceedings of the 10th International Beam Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2021, Pohang, Rep. of Korea

A very common bottleneck to study short electron bunch dynamics in accelerators is a detection scheme that can deal with high repetition rates in the MHz range. The KIT electron storage ring KARA (Karlsruhe Research Accelerator) is the first storage ring with a near-field single-shot electro-optical (EO) bunch profile monitor installed for the measurement of electron bunch dynamics in the longitudinal phase-space. Using electro-optical spectral decoding (EOSD) it is possible to imprint the bunch profile on chirped laser pulses subsequently read out by a spectrometer and a camera. However, commercially available cameras have a drawback in their acquisition rate, which is limited to a few hundred kHz. Hence, we have developed KALYPSO, an ultra-fast line camera capable of operating in the MHz regime. Its modular approach allows the installation of several sensors e.g. Si, InGaAs, PbS, PbSe to cover a wide range of spectral sensitivities. In this contribution, an overview of the EOSD experimental setup and the detector system installed for longitudinal bunch studies will be presented., Proceedings of the 10th International Beam Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2021, Pohang, Rep. of Korea

RF phase modulation at twice the synchrotron frequency can be used to split a stored electron bunch into two or more bunchlets orbiting each other. We report on time-resolved measurements at the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA), where this bunch splitting was used to increase the threshold current of the microbunching instability, happening in the short-bunch operation mode. Turning the modulation on and off reproducibly affects the sawtooth behavior of the emitted coherent synchrotron radiation., Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil

KALYPSO is a novel detector capable of operating at frame rates up to 12 MHz developed and tested at the institute of data processing and electronics (IPE) and employed at Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA) which is part of the Test Facility and Synchrotron Radiation Source KIT. This detector consists of silicon, InGaAs, PbS, or PbSe line array sensor with spectral sensitivity from 350 nm to 5000 nm. The unprecedented frame rate of this detector is achieved by a custom-designed ASIC readout chip. The FPGA-readout architecture enables continuous data acquisition and real-time data processing. Such a detector has various applications in the fields of beam diagnostics and spectral analysis. KALYPSO is currently employed at various synchrotron facilities for electro-optical spectral decoding (EOSD) to study the longitudinal profile of the electron beam, to study the energy spread of the electron beam, tuning of free-electron lasers (FELs), and also in characterizing laser spectra. This contribution will present an overview of the results from the mentioned applications., Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil

A coherent detection scheme was tested for dark photons and axion search with millimeter waves. It was shown that relative bandwidth of 169 μHz can be achieved at the center frequency of 30 GHz by commercial equipment. This is in principle a lock-in amplifier at 30 GHz. With a low noise amplifier, thermal noise can be reduced down to 1.36 × 10−24 W with one and half hours data taking and the expected signal was locked within one bin of 169 μHz resolution bandwidth by using the standard 10 MHz reference line. This will lead to a new search of dark photons in the mass range, which is complementary to any previous experiments and a future upgrade project of ALPS-II. Although a fully quantum mechanical argument will be necessary to quantify the ultimate limit of this coherent detection scheme, the use of a state-of-the-art phase-locked gyrotron and superconducting quantum sensors would lead to further improvement of millimeter-wave dark photon and axion searches.

Synchrotron light sources operate with bunch repetition rates in the MHz regime. The longitudinal and transverse beam dynamics of these electron bunches can be investigated and characterized by experiments employing linear array detectors. To improve the performance of modern beam diagnostics and overcome the limitations of commercially available detectors, we have at KIT developed KALYPSO, a detector system operating with an unprecedented frame rate of up to 12 MHz. To facilitate the integration in different experiments, a modular architecture has been utilized. Different semiconductor microstrip sensors based on Si, InGaAs, PbS, and PbSe can be connected to the custom-designed low noise front-end ASIC to optimize the quantum efficiency at different photon energies, ranging from near-UV, visible, and up to near-IR. The front-end electronics are integrated within a heterogeneous DAQ consisting of FPGAs and GPUs, which allows the implementation of real-time data processing. This detector is currently installed at KARA, European XFEL, FLASH, Soleil, DELTA. In this contribution, we present the detector architecture, the performance results, and the ongoing technical developments., Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil

KARA, the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator, can be operated in different modes, including a short-bunch mode. During this mode, where the dispersion is stretched in order to reduce the momentum-compaction factor, micro-bunching instability can occur. At KARA, several measurement setups and techniques are used to investigate this instability further with the long-term perspective to suppress and control it. In this contribution, we give an overview about the different setups and the results achieved during the past years.

The KAPTURE system (KArlsruhe Pulse Taking and Ultrafast Readout Electronics), developed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), was designed to digitize detector pulses during multi-bunch operation at the KIT storage ring KARA (Karlsruhe Research Accelerator). KAPTURE provides digitization for pulses at rates of 500 MHz using up to 4 sampling points per pulse to record each bunch and each turn for potentially unlimited time. The new KAPTURE-2 system now provides eight sampling points per pulse, including baseline sampling between pulses, which allows improved reconstruction of the pulse shape. The advanced reconstruction of the pulse shape is realized with a highly parallelised implementation on GPU. The system will be used for the investigation on longitudinal beam dynamics e.g. by measuring instability induced CSR fluctuations or arrival time oscillations. This contribution will report on first results of the KAPTURE-2 system at KARA., Proceedings of the 10th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2019, Melbourne, Australia

The storage ring Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA) at KIT operates in a wide energy range from 0.5 to 2.5 GeV. Initially, the ring was designed to serve as a Light Source for synchrotron radiation facility ANKA. Since then different operation modes have been implemented at KARA: in particular, the double bend achromat (DBA) lattice with non-dispersive straight sections, the theoretical minimum emittance (TME) lattice with distributed dispersion, and different versions of low compaction factor optics with highly stretched dispersion function. Short bunches of a few ps pulse width are available at KARA. Low alpha optics have been tested and implemented in a wide operational range of the ring and are now routinely used at 1.3 GeV for studies of CSR-induced beam dynamics and THz bursting in the micro-bunching instability. Different non-linear effects, in particular, residual high order components of magnetic fields generated in insertion devices have been studied and cured. A new operation mode at high vertical tune implemented at KARA essentially improves beam performance during user operation as well as at low alpha regimes., Proceedings of the 10th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2019, Melbourne, Australia

The energy spread is an important beam dynamics parameter. It can be derived from measurements of the horizontal bunch size. At the KIT storage ring KARA a fast-gated camera is routinely used for horizontal bunch size measurements with a single-turn resolution for a limited time span. To overcome the limits of the current camera setup in respect to resolution and time span, a high-speed line array with up to 10 Mfps, the KALYPSO system, is foreseen as a successor. The KALYPSO versions range from 256-pixel to 1024-pixel and allow unlimited turn-by-turn imaging of a single bunch at KARA. We successfully tested such a system at our visible light diagnostics port and present first results in this contribution., Proceedings of the 10th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2019, Melbourne, Australia

The microbunching instability is a longitudinal collective instability which occurs for short electron bunches in a storage ring above a certain threshold current. The instability leads to a charge modulation in the longitudinal phase space. The resulting substructures on the longitudinal bunch profile vary over time and lead to fluctuations in the emitted power of coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR). To study the underlying longitudinal dynamics on a turn-by-turn basis, the KIT storage ring KARA (Karlsruhe Research Accelerator) provides a wide variety of diagnostic systems. By synchronizing the single-shot electro-optical spectral decoding setup (longitudinal profile), the bunch-by-bunch THz detection systems (THz power) and the horizontal bunch size measurement setup (energy spread), three important properties of the bunch during this instability can be measured at every turn for long time scales. This allows a deep insight into the dynamics of the bunch under the influence of the microbunching instability. This contribution will discuss effects like the connection between the emitted CSR power and the deformations in the longitudinal bunch profile on the time scale of the instability., Proceedings of the 10th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2019, Melbourne, Australia

Several novel diagnostic systems based on the detection of coherent THz radiation are presented. The investigation of the photon beam properties allow for bunch-by-bunch and turn-by-turn diagnostics of the emitting electron bunches in the accelerator. It is used for time-resolved studies of the micro-bunching instability. Accompanying simulations with Inovesa show a good agreement with the measurement which enhances the knowledge of the physics behind the micro-bunching instability.

Accelerators with high bunch-repetition rates mandate high-throughput detector electronics to diagnose each individual bunch. KALYPSO with a 256-pixel detector line-array integrated in an fs laser-based electro-optical set-up allows longitudinal bunch profiling with sub-ps resolution as demonstrated at the storage ring ANKA for single-bunch mode operation at 2.7 MHz and also at the Eu-XFEL with a 4.5-MHz micro-bunch train. Improvements will enhance fs-time accuracy, reduce noise, and increase frame-rate. A custom front-end with an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) has been developed to operate with 10-MHz frame-rates at low noise. Several linear arrays with up to 1024 pixel and smaller pixel pitch were submitted for production. The development of a low-gain avalanche diode (LGAD) sensor will further improve the time resolution. Detector data is transmitted in the DAQ framework to external GPU-based clusters and processed in real-time at 7 Gbytes/s with a few μs latency. For beam dynamics studies we also develop KAPTURE capable to analyze terahertz detector pulses at GHz-repetition rates. These developments open new windows in beam diagnostics of modern accelerators., Proceedings of the 6th Int. Beam Instrumentation Conf., IBIC2017, Grand Rapids, MI, USA

Time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) is a versatile tool for various accelerator diagnostics aspects. Amongst others it allows a precise determination of the filling pattern. At the visible light diagnostics port at the Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA), the KIT storage ring, a Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) in combination with a histogramming device (PicoHarp) is used. To compensate for possible dead-time effects, a correction scheme was developed and tested successfully. The compensation increases the dynamic range in which accurate measurements are possible and avoids distortion of the measured filling pattern. This contribution presents the experimental setup, as well as a series of benchmark measurements., Proceedings of the 9th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2018, Vancouver, BC, Canada

While recent diffraction-limited storage rings provide bunches with transverse dimensions smaller than the wavelength of the observed synchrotron radiation, the bunch compression in the longitudinal plane is still challenging. The benefit would be single cycle pulses of coherent radiation with many orders of magnitude higher intensity. However, the self-interaction of a short electron bunch with its emitted coherent radiation can lead to micro-bunching instabilities. This effect limits the bunch compression in storage rings currently to the picosecond range. In that range, the bunches emit coherent THz radiation corresponding to their bunch length. In this paper, new measurement setups developed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology are described for systematic turn-by-turn investigations of the micro-bunching instability. They lead to a better understanding thereof and enable appropriate observation methods in future efforts of controlling and mastering the instability. Furthermore, the described setups might also be used as high repetition rate bunch compression monitors for bunches of picosecond length and below., Proceedings of the 60th ICFA Advanced Beam Dynamics Workshop on Future Light Sources, FLS2018, Shanghai, China

The storage ring Karlsruhe Research Accelerator (KARA) at KIT operate in a wide energy range from 0.5 to 2.5 GeV. Different non-linear effects, in particular, residual octupole components of the magnetic field of the CATACT wiggler at high field level (2.5 T), proximity of the working point to a vertical sextupole resonance Qy=8/3 and weak coupling octupole resonance 2Qx+2Qy=19, high chromaticity, etc. decrease the beam life time. This is because of the reduced dynamic aperture and momentum acceptance for off-momentum particles. A new operation point at high vertical tune Qy=2.81 was tested. For this, injection and ramping tables have been modified. First the values were optimized by simulations, then during beam tests, to minimize betatron tune shaking during beam-energy ramps. It stabilized high-current beams by the fast-feedback system the whole process: injection at 0.5 GeV, ramping, and operation at 1.3 GeV cycles. It essentially improved life time and beam current. In addition, new low-alpha tables have been created and tested, resulting in the reduction of the momentum compaction factor to 10⁻⁴. Short bunch operation at 0.5GeV injection energy was also tested successfully., Proceedings of the 9th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2018, Vancouver, BC, Canada

At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) the new compact versatile linear accelerator FLUTE is currently under commissioning. This accelerator will provide intense broadband THz pulses for spectroscopic experiments. Here, we demonstrate the implementation of a coherent Raman spectrometer using the RF gun laser of FLUTE. With our experiment, we can measure the Raman spectrum at ultra-low frequencies. The measurement principle, which was recently published, is based on coherent nonlinear excitation of the observed sample. The spectrometer consists of a stretcher and an interferometer, which can be simply built from standard optics. We will show that the accessible spectral range overlaps well with that from the THz pulses of the planned FLUTE experiment. Thus, the coherent Raman experiment can provide spectral information complementary to absorption spectral measurements using the THz radiation of FLUTE., Proceedings of the 9th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2018, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Recently, a new setup for measuring the beam energy spread has been commissioned at the ANKA storage ring at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This setup is based on a fast-gated intensified camera and detects the horizontal profiles of individual bunches in a multi-bunch environment on a single-turn base. As the radiation source point is located in a dispersive section of the storage ring, this allows time-resolved studies of the energy spread. These studies are of particular interest in the framework of short-bunch beam dynamics and the characterization of instabilities. The system is fully synchronized to other beam diagnostics devices allocated in various places along the storage ring, such as the single-shot electro-optical spectral decoding setup or the turn-by-turn terahertz detection systems. Here we discuss the results of the synchronous measurements with the various systems with special emphasis on the energy spread studies., Proceedings of the 8th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2017, Copenhagen, Denmark