Using the transverse digital damper as a real-time tune monitor for the Booster synchrotron at Fermilab

The Fermilab Booster is a fast ramping (15Hz) synchrotron which accelerates protons from 400MeV to 8GeV. During commissioning of a transverse digital damper system, it was shown that the damper could provide a measurement of the machine tune throughout the cycle by exciting just 1 of the 84 bunches with minimal impact on the machine operation. The algorithms used to make the measurement have been incorporated into the damper FPGA firmware allowing for real-time tune monitoring of all Booster cycles. A new Booster tune monitor was implemented in the digital damper which has minimal impact on the Booster operation. The tune measures the tunes in two planes over the energy ramping cycle with an accuracy of 0.01 in real time.