No Arabic abstract
Increasing proton beam power on neutrino production targets is one of the major goals of the Fermilab long term accelerator programs. In this effort, the Fermilab 8 GeV Booster synchrotron plays a critical role for at least the next two decades. Therefore, understanding the Booster in great detail is important as we continue to improve its performance. For example, it is important to know accurately the available RF power in the Booster by carrying out beam-based measurements in order to specify the needed upgrades to the Booster RF system. Since the Booster magnetic field is changing continuously measuring/calibrating the RF voltage is not a trivial task. Here, we present a beam based method for the RF voltage measurements. Data analysis is carried out using computer programs developed in Python and MATLAB. The method presented here is applicable to any RCS which do not have flat-bottom and flat-top in the acceleration magnetic ramps. We have also carried out longitudinal beam tomography at injection and extraction energies with the data used for RF voltage measurements. Beam based RF voltage measurements and beam tomography were never done before for the Fermilab Booster. The results from these investigations will be very useful in future intensity upgrades.
The Fermilab Booster is being upgraded under the Proton Improvement Plan (PIP) to be capable of providing a proton flux of $2.25^{17}$ protons per hour. The intensity per cycle will remain at the present operational $4.3^{12}$ protons per pulse, however the Booster beam cycle rate is going to be increased from 7.5 Hz to 15 Hz. One of the biggest challenges is to maintain the present beam loss power while the doubling the beam flux. Under PIP, there has been a large effort in beam studies and simulations to better understand the mechanisms of the beam loss. The goal is to reduce it by half by correcting and controlling the beam dynamics and by improving operational systems through hardware upgrades. This paper is going to present the recent beam study results and status of the Booster operations.
A new beam injection scheme is proposed for the Fermilab Booster to increase beam brightness. The beam is injected on the deceleration part of the sinusoidal magnetic ramp and capture is started immediately after the injection. During the entire capture process we impose Pdot=0 in a changing B field. Beam dynamics simulations clearly show that this method is very efficient with no longitudinal beam emittance dilution and no beam loss. As a consequence of preserved emittance, the required RF power on a typical Booster cycle can be reduced by ~30% as compared with the scheme in current operation. Further, we also propose snap bunch rotation at extraction to reduce dP/P of the beam to improve the slip-stacking efficiency in MI/RR.
FAST linear accelerator has been commissioned in 2017. Experimental program of the facility requires high quality beams with well-defined properties. Solenoidal fields at photoinjector, laser spot shape, space charge forces and other effects can distort beam distribution and introduce coupling. This work presents results of a beam phase space tomography for a coupled 4D case. Beam was rotated in two planes with seven quads by 180 degrees and images from YaG screen were used to perform SVD based reconstruction of the beam distribution.
Detrimental beam dynamics effects limit performance of high intensity rapid cycling synchrotrons (RCS) such as the 8 GeV proton Fermilab Booster. Here we report the results of comprehensive experimental studies of various beam intensity dependent effects in the Booster. In the first part, we report the dependencies of the Booster beam intensity losses on the total number of protons per pulse and on key operational parameters such as the machine tunes and chromaticities. Then we cross-check two methods of the beam emittance measurements (the multi-wires proportional chambers and the ionization profile monitors). Finally we used the intensity dependent emittance growth effects to analyze the ultimate performance of the machine in present configuration, with the maximum space-charge tuneshift parameter Qsc of 0.6, and after its injection energy is upgraded from 0.4 GeV to 0.8 GeV.
We have measured the total energy spread (99 persent energy spread) of the Booster beam at its injection energy of 400 MeV by three different methods - 1) creating a notch of about 40 nsec wide in the beam immediately after multiple turn injection and measuring the slippage time required for high and low momentum particles for a grazing touch in line-charge distribution, 2) injecting partial turn beam and letting it to debunch, and 3) comparing the beam profile monitor data with predictions from MAD simulations for the 400 MeV injection beam line. The measurements are repeated under varieties of conditions of RF systems in the ring and in the beam transfer line.