The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array Dish II: Characterization of Spectral Structure with Electromagnetic Simulations and its science Implications

We use time-domain electromagnetic simulations to determine the spectral characteristics of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Arrays (HERA) antenna. These simulations are part of a multi-faceted campaign to determine the effectiveness of the dish's design for obtaining a detection of redshifted 21 cm emission from the epoch of reionization. Our simulations show the existence of reflections between HERA's suspended feed and its parabolic dish reflector that fall below -40 dB at 150 ns and, for reasonable impedance matches, have a negligible impact on HERA's ability to constrain EoR parameters. It follows that despite the reflections they introduce, dishes are effective for increasing the sensitivity of EoR experiments at relatively low cost. We find that electromagnetic resonances in the HERA feed's cylindrical skirt, which is intended to reduce cross coupling and beam ellipticity, introduces significant power at large delays ($-40$ dB at 200 ns) which can lead to some loss of measurable Fourier modes and a modest reduction in sensitivity. Even in the presence of this structure, we find that the spectral response of the antenna is sufficiently smooth for delay filtering to contain foreground emission at line-of-sight wave numbers below $k_\parallel \lesssim 0.2$ $h$Mpc$^{-1}$, in the region where the current PAPER experiment operates. Incorporating these results into a Fisher Matrix analysis, we find that the spectral structure observed in our simulations has only a small effect on the tight constraints HERA can achieve on parameters associated with the astrophysics of reionization.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 18 pages, 17 Figures. Replacement matches accepted manuscrip

Simultaneous tune and coupling feedback in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and possible implications for the Large Hadron Collider commissioning

Simultaneous tune and coupling feedback were successfully implemented during RHIC run 6. In this paper we describe the measurement and control hardware and software used to accomplish this, present some of the results, discuss areas that require further investigation, and finally offer a few comments on possible implications of these results for LHC commissioning

Beam Losses and Lifetime of the LHC Beam in the SPS

Studies of the LHC beam loss in the SPS started in 2003 [1], [2] and continued in 2004. The flat bottom losses strongly depend on the batch intensity and the RF voltage. For beam with the 75 ns spacing at the same bunch intensity they are smaller than for the 25 ns spaced bunches. Large voltage on the flat bottom together with some optimum voltage at injection helps to reduce losses. Analysis of data from 2003 has shown that observations are compatible with a diffusion like process on the flat bottom. Therefore significant time during 2004 was devoted to studies of possible RF noise sources. However the main improvement in beam lifetime on the flat bottom was observed after a change in the working point in the transverse plane (MD on 1.09.2004). In this Note we present measurements of beam loss and lifetime done during several dedicated SPS MDs for different conditions in the ring. Analysis of beam coasts will be presented separately

Diagnostics Examples from Third-Generation Light Sources

This lesson discusses many examples of how the signals from the beam monitors are used to diagnose the beam in circular, third-generation synchrotron light sources. During the school, diagnostic examples in other machines (e.g. colliders, CTF3, linacs and free-electron lasers (FEL), and medical accelerators) were given in other lectures. This lesson assumes that the signal generation in the instrument itself is already known; the main focus lies on the dependence of the signals on various machine parameters and their interpretation to diagnose the machine parameters and conditions.Comment: 22 pages, contribution to the CAS - CERN Accelerator School: Beam Instrumentation, 2-15 June 2018, Tuusula, Finlan

Symmetric achromatic low-beta collider interaction region design concept

We present a new symmetry-based concept for an achromatic low-beta collider interaction region design. A specially-designed symmetric Chromaticity Compensation Block (CCB) induces an angle spread in the passing beam such that it cancels the chromatic kick of the final focusing quadrupoles. Two such CCBs placed symmetrically around an interaction point allow simultaneous compensation of the 1st-order chromaticities and chromatic beam smear at the IP without inducing significant 2nd-order aberrations to the particle trajectory. We first develop an analytic description of this approach and explicitly formulate 2nd-order aberration compensation conditions at the interaction point. The concept is next applied to develop an interaction region design for the ion collider ring of an electron-ion collider. We numerically evaluate performance of the design in terms of momentum acceptance and dynamic aperture. The advantages of the new concept are illustrated by comparing it to the conventional distributed-sextupole chromaticity compensation scheme.Comment: 12 pages, 17 figures, to be submitted to Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beam

Visual discomfort and variations in chromaticity in art and nature

SH was supported by a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (26282), an R15 AREA award from the National Institute of Mental Health (122935), an NSF EPSCoR grant (1632849) on which SH is a co-investigator, and the NIH COBRE PG20GM103650. OP was partially funded by a Leverhulme grant (RPG-2019-096) to Julie M. Harris and a Research Incentive Grant from the Carnegie Trust (RIG009298).Visual discomfort is related to the statistical regularity of visual images. The contribution of luminance contrast to visual discomfort is well understood and can be framed in terms of a theory of efficient coding of natural stimuli, and linked to metabolic demand. While colour is important in our interaction with nature, the effect of colour on visual discomfort has received less attention. In this study, we build on the established association between visual discomfort and differences in chromaticity across space. We average the local differences in chromaticity in an image and show that this average is a good predictor of visual discomfort from the image. It accounts for part of the variance left unexplained by variations in luminance. We show that the local chromaticity difference in uncomfortable stimuli is high compared to that typical in natural scenes, except in particular infrequent conditions such as the arrangement of colourful fruits against foliage. Overall, our study discloses a new link between visual ecology and discomfort whereby discomfort arises when adaptive perceptual mechanisms are overstimulated by specific classes of stimuli rarely found in nature.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe