Architectures and algorithms for control and diagnostics of coupled-bunch instabilities in circular accelerators

Modern light sources and circular colliders employ large numbers of high-intensity particle bunches in order to achieve high luminosity. The electromagnetic coupling of bunches via resonant structures causes coherent instabilities at high beam currents. Achieving high luminosity requires the control of such unstable motion. Feedback control is challenging due to wideband nature of the problem with up to 250 MHz bandwidths required. This thesis presents digital signal processing architectures and diagnostic techniques for control of longitudinal and transverse coupled-bunch instabilities.; Diagnostic capabilities integrated into the feedback system allow one to perform fast transient measurements of unstable dynamics by perturbing the beam from the controlled state via feedback and recording the time-domain response. Such measurements enable one to thoroughly characterize plant (beam) dynamics as well as performance of the feedback system.; Beam dynamics can change significantly over the operating range of accelerator currents and energies. Here we present several methods for design of robust stabilizing feedback controllers. Experimental results from several accelerators are presented.; A new baseband architecture for transverse feedback is described that compactly implements the digital processing functions using field-programmable gate array devices. The architecture is designed to be software configurable so that the same hardware can be used for instability control in different accelerators.