Digital transverse beam dampers for the Brookhaven AGS

A wide band, digital damper system has been developed and is in use at the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS). The system consists of vertical and horizontal capacitive pickups, analog and digital processing electronics, four 500 Watt wide band power amplifiers, and two pairs of strip line beam kickers. The system is currently used to damp transverse coherent instabilities and injection errors, in both planes, for protons and all species of heavy ions. This paper discusses the system design and operation, particularly with regard to stabilization of the high intensity proton beam. The analog and digital signal processing techniques used to achieve optimum results are discussed. Operational data showing the effect of the damping is presented