Chromaticity dependence of the transverse effective impedance in the CERN Proton Synchrotron

The current knowledge of the transverse beam coupling impedance of the CERN Proton Synchrotron (PS) has been established with beam-based measurements at different energies. The transverse coherent tune shift as a function of the beam intensity has been measured in order to evaluate the total effective imaginary part of the transverse impedance in the accelerator at the energies of 7, 13 and 25 GeV. Measurements have been performed changing the vertical chromaticity for each vertical tune scan with intensity. The data analysis revealed an increase of impedance with chromaticity for all the considered energies. The transverse impedance can be compared with the previously evaluated theoretical impedance budget taking into account the individual contribution of several machine devices

Implementation of synchronised PS-SPS transfer with barrier buckets

For the future intensity increase of the fixed-target beams in the CERN accelerator complex, a barrier-bucket scheme has been developed to reduce the beam loss during the 5-turn extraction from the PS towards the SPS, the so-called Multi-Turn Extraction. The low-level RF system must synchronise the barrier phase with the PS extraction and SPS injection kickers to minimise the number of particles lost during the rise times of their fields. As the RF voltage of the wide-band cavity generating the barrier bucket would be too low for a conventional synchronisation, a combination of a feedforward cogging manipulation and the real-time control of the barrier phase has been developed and tested. A deterministic frequency bump has been added to compensate for the imperfect circumference ratio between PS and SPS. This contribution presents the concept and implementation of the synchronised barrier-bucket transfer. Measurements with high-intensity beam demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed transfer scheme.Comment: Talk presented at LLRF Workshop 2022 (LLRF2022, arXiv:2208.13680

Measurement of transverse beam emittance of split beams for the CERN Proton Synchrotron Multi-Turn Extraction

Crossing a horizontal nonlinear resonance is the approach that can be used to split a beam in several beamlets with the goal to perform multi-turn extraction from a circular particle accelerator. Such an approach has been successfully implemented in the CERN Proton Synchrotron and is used routinely for the production of high-intensity proton beams for fixed-target physics at the Super Proton Synchrotron. Recently, thanks to the deployment of diamond detectors, originally installed to monitor the beam losses at extraction, it has been possible to measure the horizontal beam emittance of the split beam just prior to extraction. This is the first time that an emittance measurement is attempted for split beams, i.e. in a regime of highly nonlinear beam dynamics. In this paper, the technique is presented and its application to the analysis of the experimental data is presented and discussed in detail. This result is essential for the performance assessment of the splitting process and for the design of further performance improvements

Pb-ions in harmonic number 4653 at SPS flat bottom

Pb-ion beams suer from strong beam degradation suchas transverse emittance growth and losses on the long flatbottom of the SPS cycles used for LHC filling. A possiblecontribution to the losses could come from RF noise, espe-cially due to the frequency and amplitude modulation duringeach revolution period of the fixed frequency accelerationmode required for the acceleration of these beams. A ma-chine development session in 2016 was devoted to a directcomparison of a cycle with fixed harmonic number at flatbottom and a cycle with the usually used fixed frequencymode. The main results are reported here

A novel non-adiabatic approach to transition crossing in a circular hadron accelerator

Crossing the transition energy is always a delicate process, representing a potential source of strong perturbations of the dynamics of charged particle beams in a hadron circular accelerator. Since the first generation of multi-GeV rings, intense studies have been devoted to understanding the possible harmful mechanisms involved in transition crossing and to devise mitigation measures. Nowadays, several circular particle accelerators are successfully operating across the transition energy and this process is well mastered. In a completely different context, stable resonances of the traverse phase space have been proposed as new means of manipulating charged particle beams. While the original aim of such a proposal was multi-turn extraction from the CERN Proton Synchrotron to the Super Proton Synchrotron, many more applications have been proposed and studied in detail. In this paper, the two topics, i.e. transition crossing and stable resonances, have been brought together with the goal of providing a novel and non-adiabatic approach to perform a clean transition crossing. The idea presented here is that by judiciously using sextupoles and octupoles it is possible to generate stable islands of the horizontal phase space. These islands represent a second closed orbit whose properties can be selected independently of those of the standard, i.e. central, closed orbit. This provides a means of performing a non-adiabatic change of the transition energy experienced by the charged particles by displacing the beam between the two closed orbits.Crossing the transition energy is always a delicate process, representing a potential source of strong perturbations of the dynamics of charged particle beams in a hadron circular accelerator. Since the first generation of multi-GeV rings, intense studies have been devoted to understanding the possible harmful mechanisms involved in transition crossing and to devise mitigation measures. Nowadays, several circular particle accelerators are successfully operating across transition and this process is well mastered. In a completely different context, stable resonances of the traverse phase space have been proposed as new means of manipulating charged particle beams. While the original aim of such a proposal was multi-turn extraction from the CERN Proton Synchrotron to the Super Proton Synchrotron, many more applications have been proposed and studied in detail. In this paper, the two topics, i.e. transition crossing and stable resonances, have been brought together with the goal of providing a novel and non-adiabatic approach to perform a clean transition crossing. The idea presented here is that by judiciously using sextupoles and octupoles it is possible to generate stable islands of the horizontal phase space. These islands represent a second closed orbit whose properties can be selected independently of those of the standard, i.e. central, closed orbit. This provides a means of performing a non-adiabatic change of the transition energy experienced by the charged particles by displacing the beam between the two closed orbits

Transverse studies with ions at SPS flat bottom

The LHC injectors upgrade project (LIU) aims at con-solidating and upgrading the existing accelerator chain atCERN in view of the increased beam performance requiredfor the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) project. For theion chain, the losses and emittance growth in the SPS imposepresently the main performance limitation. The significantbeam degradation encountered on the long injection plateauhas been studied during the 2016 MD runs with Pb82+. Inthis report we present the systematic measurements of emit-tance, bunch length and transmission performed along theinjection plateau for different bunch intensities. We present,as well, static and dynamic tune scans for the optimizationof the working point and measurement of the loss rate atcloseby resonances

Space charge and working point studies in the CERN Low Energy Ion Ring

The Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) is at the heart ofCERN’s heavy ion physics programme and was designed toprovide the high phase space densities required by the exper-iments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). LEIR is the firstsynchrotron of the LHC ion injector chain and it receives aquasi-continuous pulse of lead ions (Pb54+) from Linac3, ex-ploiting a sophisticated multi-turn injection scheme in bothtransverse and longitudinal planes. Seven of these pulses areinjected and accumulated, which requires continuous elec-tron cooling (EC) at low energy to decrease the phase spacevolume of the circulating beam in between two injections.Subsequently, the coasting beam is adiabatically capturedin two bunches, which are then accelerated and extractedtowards the Proton Synchrotron (PS). Figure 1 shows theLEIR magnetic cycle and the different steps required forbeam production

Barrier bucket gymnastics and transversely split proton beams: Performance at the CERN Proton and Super Proton Synchrotrons

During the 2018 proton run, a new radio-frequency beam manipulation has been studied and successfully implemented at the CERN Proton Synchrotron (PS) for the first time. This technique is used to deplete a well-defined fraction of a continuous longitudinal beam distribution by creating a so-called barrier bucket. We propose a new application of the barrier bucket gymnastics in the multiturn extraction scheme used at CERN. These two exotic techniques are combined into a highly sophisticated procedure that dramatically reduces the beam losses at PS extraction, thus paving the way to high-intensity proton beams for future fixed-target experiments at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). In this paper, the expected performance of the PS and SPS is analyzed in detail to define a road map for making this novel extraction scheme operational

Analysis of performance fluctuations for the CERN Proton Synchrotron multi-turn extraction

After the successful beam commissioning and tests in 2015, the Multi-Turn Extraction (MTE) has been put in operation in 2016. In this paper, the remaining issues related with fluctuation of the MTE performance are evaluated and correlation studies are presented in view of estimating the impact of planned improvements