Transverse damping systems for the future CERN LHC

Injection of the high intensity proton beam into the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presents challenging requirements for the transverse damping system built as a joint project between CERN and JINR (Dubna). This system must quickly reduce injection errors to minimise beam loss to remove risk of quench, and preserve emittance for high luminosity. It should work in a wide frequency range of 20 MHz to fight transverse coupled bunch instabilities. A low frequency electrostatic kicker with tetrode amplifiers has been chosen and the design considerations leading to this choice are described. The kicker design took account of the heating due to the electron cloud effect. A model to simulate the kicker/amplifier combination is presented. Finally preliminary results on the performance of the prototype damper power amplifier and kicker are given.