Prototype of linac BLM at NSRL

A prototype of the Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) System for the linac and transportation line has been built up in National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. Different from the storage ring, the radiation field around linac and transportation line have a duty factor of 10−6 and a dose rate of hundreds Gy/h. The Monte-Carlo calculation gave the dose, flux, energy and direction distributions of the radiation field. According to the simulation result, the proper type of detector was chosen and the installation positions were selected accordingly. The widely used ionization chamber is not suitable to give accurate and real-time information of beam loss due to its large dimension and slow respond speed. Several PIN silicon diode-based detectors were designed and tested, and a charge-balanced integrating amplifier circuit was applied to read out the charge. A distributed data acquisition system based on embedded Ethernet technology was implemented in the prototype, which can offer a web server from the microcontroller. From preliminary tests, this new prototype was proved to be sensitive to the change of the linac status, and is a useful tool for monitoring and adjusting machine parameters. Further analyses are required to achieve a more accurate measurement of the beam loss.