Modeling the interaction of a heavily beam loaded SRF cavity with its low-level RF feedback loops

A superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavity provides superior stability to power high intensity light sources and can suppress coupled-bunch instabilities due to its smaller impedance for higher order modes. Because of these features, SRF cavities are commonly used for modern light sources, such as the TLS, CLS, DLS, SSRF, PLS-II, TPS, and NSLS-II, with an aggressive approach to operate the light sources at high beam currents. However, operating a SRF cavity at high beam currents may result with unacceptable stability problems of the low level RF (LLRF) system, due to drifts of the cavity resonant frequency caused by unexpected perturbations from the environment. As the feedback loop gets out of control, the cavity voltage may start to oscillate with a current-dependent characteristic frequency. Such situations can cause beam abort due to the activation of the interlock protection system, i.e. false alarm of quench detection. This malfunction of the light source reduces the reliability of SRF operation. Understanding this unstable mechanism to prevent its appearance becomes a primary task in the pursuit of highly reliable SRF operation. In this paper, a Pedersen model, including the response of the LLRF system, was used to simulate the beam-cavity interaction of a SRF cavity under heavy beam loading. Causes for the onset of instability at high beam current will be discussed as well as remedies to assure the design of a stable LLRF system.