Versatile LLRF platform for FLASH laser

摘要

Research in physics, biology, chemistry, pharmacology, material research and in other branches more and more frequently use free electron lasers as a source of very intense, pulsed and coherent radiation spanning from optical, via UV to X-ray EM beams. The paper presents FLASH laser, which now generates VUV radiation in the range of 10-50nm. The role of low level radio frequency (LLRF) control system is shown in a superconductive linear accelerator. The electron beam from accelerator is injected to the undulator, where it is "converted" to a photon beam. The used LLRF system is based on FPGA circuits integrated directly with a number of analog RF channels. Main part of the work describes an original authors' solution of a universal LLRF control module for superconductive, resonant cavities of FLASH accelerator and laser. A modular construction of the module was debated. The module consists of a digital part residing on the base platform and exchangeable analog part positioned on a number of daughter-boards. The functional structure of the module was presented and in particular the FPGA implementation with configuration and extension block for RF mezzanine boards. The construction and chosen technological details of the backbone PCB were presented. The paper concludes with a number of application examples of the constructed and debugged module in the LLRF system of FLASH accelerator and laser. There are presented exemplary results of quality assessment measurements of the new system board.