Online monitoring of beam phase and intensity using lock-in amplifiers

We have developed a monitoring system dedicated for heavy-ion cyclotrons that incorporates lock-in amplifiers (LIAs) that can measure the beam phase of signals from phase probe with an amplitude of a few hundred nanovolts. We have compared the performance of the LIA system with that of a conventional system that incorporates oscilloscopes (OSCs). It was confirmed that the LIA system has a much higher precision than the OSC system by the measurement with a wide dynamic range of beam current. Isochronism measurements for a ring cyclotron with a low velocity gain (1.5) were made using both systems and excellent agreement was found between them. However there was a discrepancy between the beam phase measurements using the OSC system and the LIA system, for the case of a ring cyclotron with a high velocity gain of 4.0. It turned out due to a large radial variation of the phase width of circulating beam bunch according to a radial distribution of the acceleration voltage. It was also confirmed that the cable dispersion disturbs the beam-phase measurement using OSC system.