Data Acquisition System for RF Cavity Hadron Monitor
As Fermilab pursues intensity frontier physics, the conventional detectors are not up to the challenge of higher radiation exposure. The detectors in the NuMI beamline rely on knowing the angular distribution of the secondary hadrons in order to infer properties of the resultant neutrino beam. A novel gas-filled RF cavity beam detector is proposed that will be simple and radiation robust in high-radiation environments. Charged particles passing through the cavity produce ionized plasma, which changes the permittivity of the gas and modulate the stored RF field in the cavity. The preliminary beam test of an RF cavity demonstrates the proof of principle of the beam detector. In an effort to acquire a large amount of data for various cavity parameters, an automatic data acquisition (DAQ) system is designed in LabVIEW. The DAQ system utilizes a Real-Time Power meter from Boonton to acquire RF power data from the cavity.