A two-bunch beam position monitor performance evaluation

New beam position processing electronics for the Linear Accelerator allow faster feedback and processing of both positron and electron bunch positions in a single machine pulse. More than 30 electron-positron beam position monitors (epBPMs) have been installed at SLAC in various applications and have met all design requirements. The SLC production electron bunch follows the positron bunch down the linac separated by 58.8 nS. The epBPM measures the position of both bunches with an accuracy of better than 5 μm at nominal operating intensities. For SLC, the epBPMs have measured the position of bunches consisting of from 1 to 8x1010 particles per bunch. For PEP-II (B Factory) injection, epBPMs have been used with larger electrodes and several BPMs have been combined on a single cable set. The signals are separated for measurement in the epBPM by timing. In PEP-II injection we have measured the position of bunches of as little as 2x109 particles per bunch. To meet the demands of SLC and PEP-II injection, the epBPM has been designed with three triggering modes: 1. As a self-triggering detector, it can trigger off the beam and hold the peak signal until read out by the control program. 2. The gated mode uses external timing signals to gate the beam trigger. 3. The external trigger mode uses the external timing signals offset with internal vernier delays to precisely catch peak signals in noisy environments. Finally, the epBPM also has built-in timing verniers capable of nulling errors in cable set fabrication and differences in channel-to-channel signal delay. Software has made all this functionality available through the SLC control system