Nicolo Biancacci

Beam Instabilities in Hadron Synchrotrons

Beam instabilities cover a wide range of effects in particle accelerators and they have been the subjects of intense research for several decades. As the machines performance was pushed new mechanisms were revealed and nowadays the challenge consists in studying the interplays between all these intricate phenomena, as it is very often not possible to treat the different effects separately. The aim of this paper is to review the main mechanisms, discussing in particular the recent developments of beam instability theories and simulations.

High Luminosity LHC: Challenges and plans

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the largest scientific instruments ever built. Since opening up a new energy frontier for exploration in 2010, it has gathered a global user community working in fundamental particle physics and the physics of hadronic matter at extreme temperature and density. To sustain and extend its discovery potential, the LHC will undergo a major upgrade in the 2020s. This will increase its rate of collisions by a factor of five beyond the original design value and the integrated luminosity by a factor ten. The new configuration, known as High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), will rely on a number of key innovations that push accelerator technology beyond its present limits. Among these are cutting-edge 11–12 T superconducting magnets, including Nb3Sn-based magnets never used in accelerators before, compact superconducting cavities for longitudinal beam rotation, new technology and physical processes for beam collimation. The dynamics of the HL-LHC beams will be also particularly challenging and this aspect is the main focus of this paper.

Expected Impact of Hardware Changes on Impedance and Beam-induced Heating during Run 2

Following the significant impedance related issues that occurred during the LHC Run 1, all involved equipment groups made an impressive effort to assess and reduce the impedance of their near-beam components. Concerning beam induced RF heating, many problems in Run 1 were linked to unexpected non-conformities. Mitigations were put in place but new non-conformities are likely to appear in Run 2, and this is why efficient monitoring and alarms are currently put in place. Besides, known limitations that led to increase the bunch ength from 1 ns to 1.25 ns were removed, which would open the possibility to try and reduce the target bunch length at top energy. Regardless of the target bunch length, many components will need careful follow up in 2015 (e.g. TDI, BSRT, Roman pots, MKI, BGV). Concerning the LHC impedance, announced hardware changes are expected to be transparent, but the new TCTP and TCSP collimators with BPMs and ferrites should be monitored closely, as well as the modified Roman pots, new TCL4 and especially new TCL6 collimators if they approach the beam with very low gaps at high beam intensity.

JACoW : Simulation and Measurement of the TMCI Threshold in the LHC

The Transverse Mode Coupling Instability (TMCI) occurs in individual bunches when two transverse oscillation modes couple at high bunch intensity. Simulations predict an instability threshold in the LHC at a single bunch intensity of 3 · 1011 protons. The TMCI threshold can be inferred by measuring the tune shift as a function of intensity. This measurement was performed in the LHC for different machine impedances and bunch intensities. The impedance was changed by varying the primary and secondary collimators gaps to increase their contribution to the resistive wall impedance. The experiment also allowed to assess the validity of the LHC impedance model in the single bunch regime, at low chromaticities.

Measurements of the CERN PS Longitudinal Resistive Coupling Impedance

The longitudinal coupling impedance of the CERN PS has been studied in the past years in order to better understand collective effects which could produce beam intensity limitations for the LHC Injectors Upgrade project. By measuring the incoherent quadrupole synchrotron frequency vs beam intensity, the inductive impedance was evaluated and compared with the impedance model obtained by taking into account the contribution of the most important machine devices. In this paper, we present the results of the measurements performed during a dedicated campaign, of the real part of the longitudinal coupling impedance by means of the synchronous phase shift vs beam intensity. The phase shift has been measured by using two different techniques: in one case, we injected in the machine two bunches, one used as a reference with constant intensity, and the second one changing its intensity; in the second case, more conventional, we measured the bunch position with respect to the RF signal of the 40 MHz cavities. The obtained dependence of the synchrotron phase with intensity is then related to the loss factor and the resistive coupling impedance, which is compared to the real part of the PS impedance model.

Simulation of instability at transition energy with a new impedance model for CERN PS

Instabilities driven by the transverse impedance are proven to be one of the limitations for the high intensity reach of the CERN PS. Since several years, fast single bunch vertical instability at transition energy has been observed with the high intensity bunch serving the neutron Time-of-Flight facility (n-ToF). In order to better understand the instability mechanism, a dedicated measurement campaign took place. The results were compared with macro-particle simulations with PyHEADTAIL based on the new impedance model developed for the PS. Instability threshold and growth rate for different longitudinal emittances and beam intensities were studied.