Beam Halo Imaging with a Digital Optical Mask

Beam halo is an important factor in any high intensity accelerator. It can cause difficulties in the control of the beam, emittance growth, particle loss and even damage to the accelerator. It is therefore essential to understand the mechanisms of halo formation and its dynamics in order to control and minimize its effects. Experimental measurement of the halo distribution is an important tool for such studies. In this paper, we present a new adaptive masking method that we have developed to image beam halo, which uses a digital micro-mirror-array device (DMD). This method has been thoroughly investigated in the laboratory using laser and white light sources, and with real beams produced by the University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER). A high dynamic range ~10(5) has been demonstrated with this new method and recent studies indicate that this number can be exceeded for more intense beams by at least an order of magnitude. The method is flexible, easy to setup and can be used at any accelerator or light source. We present the results of our measurements of the performance of the method and images of beam halos produced under various experimental conditions.

Multi-component measurements of the Jefferson Lab energy recovery linac electron beam using optical transition and diffraction radiation

High brightness electron accelerators, such as energy recovery linacs (ERL), often have complex particle distributions that can create difficulties in beam transport as well as matching to devices such as wigglers used to generate radiation from the beam. Optical transition radiation (OTR), OTR interferometry (OTRI) and optical diffraction-transition radiation interferometry (ODTRI) have proven to be effective tools for diagnosing both the spatial and angular distributions of charged particle beams. OTRI and ODTRI have been used to measure rms divergences and optical transverse phase space mapping has been demonstrated using OTRI. In this work we present the results of diagnostic experiments using OTR and ODR conducted at the Jefferson Laboratory 115 MeV ERL which show the presence of two separate components within the spatial and angular distributions of the beam. By assuming a correlation between the spatial and angular features we estimate an rms emittance value for each of the two components.