Towards the Automatic Setup of Longitudinal Emittance Blow-Up in the CERN SPS

Controlled longitudinal emittance blow-up in the CERN SPS is necessary to stabilize high-intensity beams for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) by increasing the synchrotron frequency spread. The process consists of injecting bandwidth-limited noise into the main RF phase loop to diffuse particles in the core of the bunch. The setting up of the noise parameters, such as frequency band and amplitude, is a non-trivial and time-consuming procedure that has been performed manually so far. In this preliminary study, several optimization methods are investigated to set up the noise parameters automatically. We apply the CERN Common Optimization Interfaces as a generic framework for the optimization algorithm. Single-bunch profiles generated with the BLonD simulation code have been used to investigate the optimization algorithms offline. Furthermore, analysis has been carried out on measured bunch profiles in the SPS to define the problem constraints and properly formulate the objective function

RF Voltage Calibration Using Phase Space Tomography in the CERN SPS

Voltage calibration using longitudinal phase-space tomography is a purely beam-based technique to determine the effective RF voltage experienced by a bunch. It was applied in the SPS, separately to each of its six accelerating travelling wave structures. A low spread in voltage errors was obtained by carefully optimizing the number of acquired bunch profiles. The technique moreover provided the relative phases of the cavities, which allowed their alignment to be checked. Pairs of cavities were measured as well to validate the consistency of the single-cavity voltages. The beam measurements were repeated after several months to confirm the reproducibility of the results. Longitudinal beam dynamics simulations, including the full SPS impedance model, were performed as a benchmark. The aim was to verify that the effect of the cable transfer-function on the bunch profiles can be neglected, as well as collective effects and small errors in the accelerator parameters

Controlled Longitudinal Emittance Blow-Up for High Intensity Beams in the CERN SPS

Controlled longitudinal emittance blow-up will be required to longitudinally stabilise the beams for the HighLuminosity LHC in the SPS. Bandwidth-limited noise is injected at synchrotron frequency sidebands of the RF voltage of the main accelerating system through the beam phase loop. The setup of the blow-up parameters is complicated by bunch-by-bunch differences in their phase, shape, and intensity, as well as by the interplay with the fourth harmonic Landau RF system and transient beam loading in the main RF system. During previous runs, an optimisation of the blowup had to be repeated manually at every intensity step up, requiring hours of precious machine time. With the higher beam intensity, the difficulties will be exacerbated, with bunch-by-bunch differences becoming even more important. We look at the extent of the impact of intensity effects on the controlled longitudinal blow-up by means of macro-particle tracking, as well as analytical calculations, and we derive criteria for quantifying its effectiveness. These studies are relevant to identify the parameters and observables which become key to the operational setup and exploitation of the blow-up