Stochastic Cooling at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator

When transforming the CERN Antiproton Collector (AC) into the Antiproton Decelerator (AD), the stochastic cooling systems were rebuilt to cope with the new requirements. Instead of using the original three frequency bands, (0.9-1.6 GHz, 1.6-2.45 GHz and 2.4-3.2 GHz) only the first of these was used due to lattice limitations and other constraints. The same pick-ups and kickers are in use at two different energies. As in the AC, simultaneous cooling in all three phase planes is required. Switching between two transmission paths (at 3.5 GeV/c and 2.0 GeV/c) became necessary, including separate notch filters and delay compensation for the kicker sections. The tanks has to be rendered bakeable (150 C) to make the vacuum properties (<10-10 Torr) compatible with deceleration to low energies. Further improvements included programmable, phase-invariant electronic attenuators and amplitude-invariant delays. Experience during commissioning showed that careful optimization (depth and periodicity) of the notch filters, as well as efficient suppression of the common mode response in the transverse cooling systems, were essential to reach and even exceed design performance. The systems were operated with protons (about 109) as well as pbars (2-3x107).