Numerical simulations of a vacuum post-hole convolute driven by magnetically insulated vacuum transmission lines (MITLs) are used to study current losses due to charged particle emission from the MITL-convolute-system electrodes. This work builds on the results of a previous study [E. A. Madrid et al. Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams 16, 120401 (2013)] and adds realistic power pulses, Ohmic heating of anode surfaces, and a model for the formation and evolution of cathode plasmas. The simulations suggest that modestly larger anode-cathode gaps in the MITLs upstream of the convolute result in significantly less current loss. In addition, longer pulse durations lead to somewhat greater current loss due to cathode-plasma expansion. These results can be applied to the design of future MITL-convolute systems for high-current pulsed-power systems.

The need for precisely defined beam shapes in photoelectron sources has been well established. In this paper, we use a spatial light modulator and simple shaping algorithm to create arbitrary, detailed transverse laser shapes with high fidelity. We transmit this shaped laser to the photocathode of a high voltage dc gun. Using beam currents where space charge is negligible, and using an imaging solenoid and fluorescent viewscreen, we show that the resultant beam shape preserves these detailed features with similar fidelity. Next, instead of transmitting a shaped laser profile, we use an active feedback on the unshaped electron beam image to create equally accurate and detailed shapes. We demonstrate that this electron beam feedback has the added advantage of correcting for electron optical aberrations, yielding shapes without skew. The method may serve to provide precisely defined electron beams for low current target experiments, space-charge dominated beam commissioning, as well as for online adaptive correction of photocathode quantum efficiency degradation.

Future light sources aim at achieving a diffraction limited photon beam both in the horizontal and vertical planes. High gradient quadrupoles and strong chromaticity correction sextupoles in a corresponding ultra-low emittance ring may restrict the physical and dynamic aperture of the storage ring such that off-axis injection and accumulation may become impossible. We propose a longitudinal injection scheme, i.e., injecting an electron bunch onto the closed orbit with a time offset with respect to the circulating bunches. The temporal separation enables a pulsed dipole kicker to situate the injected bunch transversely on-axis without disturbing the circulating bunches if the pulse length is shorter than the bunch spacing. The injected bunch is finally merged to a circulating bunch through synchrotron radiation damping. We present the scheme in detail and its application to the lattice of the MAX IV 3 GeV storage ring. The requirements and feasibility of the pulsed dipole kicker are also discussed.

Recent advancements in microelectromechanical system (MEMS) fabrication techniques have enabled the batch-fabrication of quadrupole MEMS electromagnets producing 100 mT-scale field across sub-mm gaps with the potential for transformational advances in the field of compact high performance charged particle focusing and steering optics. The footprint of these in-vacuum focusing and steering optics can be as small as $3\mathrm{mm}\times 3\mathrm{mm}\times 0.5\mathrm{mm}$. The low electromagnet impedance ($58\mathrm{m}\mathrm{\Omega }$, 32 nH per pole) facilitates power-efficient operation and continuous or low duty cycle operation, and the individually controlled electromagnets allow combined dipole-quadrupole fields. Here we report on an experiment where these miniature devices have been used to focus and steer a 34 keV electron beam from a DC photogun, demonstrating the first application of magnetic MEMS to particle beam focusing.

A simple arrangement of undulator magnets having nearly zero magnetic force between the upper and lower magnet arrays is proposed, which significantly simplifies the mechanical structure of undulators. In this arrangement, each magnet array is divided into a number of sections, half of which are phase-shifted according to a particular rule without breaking the periodic condition required for the undulator field. Calculation results show that, when the gap over period is in practical range, more than or equal to $1/18$, the magnetic force can be reduced down to less than $1/50$ of that in the Halbach undulator by applying the proposed scheme.

Nonlinear $N$-body integrable Hamiltonian systems, where $N$ is an arbitrary number, have attracted the attention of mathematical physicists for the last several decades, following the discovery of some number of these systems. This paper presents a new integrable system, which can be realized in facilities such as particle accelerators. This feature makes it more attractive than many of the previous such systems with singular or unphysical forces.

The numerical noise inherent to particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation of 3d anisotropic high intensity bunched beams in periodic focusing is compared with the analytical model by Struckmeier [Part. Accel. 45, 229 (1994)]. The latter assumes that entropy growth can be related to Markov type stochastic processes due to temperature anisotropy and the artificial “collisions” caused by using macro-particles and calculating the space charge effect. The PIC simulations are carried out with the tracewin code widely used for high intensity beam simulation. The resulting noise can lead to growth of the six-dimensional rms emittance. The logarithm of the latter is shown to qualify as rms-based entropy. We confirm the dependence of this growth on the bunch temperature anisotropy as predicted by Struckmeier. However, we also find a grid and focusing dependent component of noise not predicted by Struckmeier. Although commonalities exist with well-established models for collision effects in PIC-simulation of extended plasmas, a distinctive feature is the presence of a periodic focusing potential, wherein the beam one-component plasma extends only over relatively few Debye lengths. Our findings are applied in particular to noise in high current linac beam simulation, where they help for optimization of the balance between the number of simulation particles and the grid resolution.

In this paper, we propose a simple scheme that leverages existing x-ray free-electron laser hardware to produce stable single-spike, subfemtosecond x-ray pulses. By optimizing a high-harmonic radio-frequency linearizer to achieve nonlinear compression of a low-charge (20 pC) electron beam, we obtain a sharp current profile possessing a few-femtosecond full width at half maximum temporal duration. A reverse undulator taper is applied to enable lasing only within the current spike, where longitudinal space charge forces induce an electron beam time-energy chirp. Simulations based on the Linac Coherent Light Source parameters show that stable single-spike x-ray pulses with a duration less than 200 attoseconds can be obtained.

One of the most challenging tasks for extreme ultraviolet, soft and hard x-ray free-electron laser photon diagnostics is the precise determination of the photon pulse duration, which is typically in the sub 100 fs range. Nine different methods, able to determine such ultrashort photon pulse durations, were compared experimentally at FLASH, the self-amplified spontaneous emission free-electron laser at DESY in Hamburg, in order to identify advantages and disadvantages of different methods. Radiation pulses at a wavelength of 13.5 and 24.0 nm together with the corresponding electron bunch duration were measured by indirect methods like analyzing spectral correlations, statistical fluctuations, and energy modulations of the electron bunch and also by direct methods like autocorrelation techniques, terahertz streaking, or reflectivity changes of solid state samples. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of the various techniques and a comparison of the individual experimental results. The information gained is of utmost importance for the future development of reliable pulse duration monitors indispensable for successful experiments with ultrashort extreme ultraviolet pulses.

The development of capable, reliable, and cost-effective compact electron beam sources remains a long-standing objective of the efforts to develop the accelerator systems needed for on-site research and industrial applications ranging from electron beam welding to high performance x-ray and gamma ray light sources for element-resolved microanalysis and national security. The need in these applications for simplicity, reliability, and low cost has emphasized solutions compatible with the use of the long established and commercially available pulsed microwave rf sources and L-, S- or X-band linear accelerators. Thermionic microwave electron guns have proven to be one successful approach to the development of the electron sources for these systems providing high macropulse average current beams with picosecond pulse lengths and good emittance out to macropulse lengths of 4–5 microseconds. But longer macropulse lengths are now needed for use in inverse-Compton x-ray sources and other emerging applications. We describe in this paper our approach to extending the usable macropulse current and pulse length of these guns through the use of thermal diffusion to compensate for the increase in cathode surface temperature due to back-bombardment.

Ground motion is a severe problem for many particle accelerators, since it excites beam oscillations, which decrease the beam quality and create beam-beam offset (at colliders). Orbit feedback systems can only compensate ground motion effects at frequencies significantly smaller than the beam repetition rate. In linear colliders, where the repetition rate is low, additional counter measures have to be put in place. For this reason, a ground motion mitigation method based on feed-forward control is presented in this paper. It has several advantages compared to other techniques (stabilization systems and intratrain feedback systems) such as cost reduction and potential performance improvement. An analytical model is presented that allows the derivation of hardware specification and performance estimates for a specific accelerator and ground motion model. At the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF2), ground motion sensors have been installed to verify the feasibility of important parts of the mitigation strategy. In experimental studies, it has been shown that beam excitations due to ground motion can be predicted from ground motion measurements on a pulse-to-pulse basis. Correlations of up to 80% between the estimated and measured orbit jitter have been observed. Additionally, an orbit jitter source was identified and has been removed, which halved the orbit jitter power at ATF2 and shows that the feed-forward scheme is also very useful for the detection of installation issues. We believe that the presented mitigation method has the potential to reduce costs and improve the performance of linear colliders and potentially other linear accelerators.

The charge state distributions of krypton (${}^{86}\mathrm{Kr}$) with an energy of $2.7\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{nucleon}$ were measured using hydrogen (${\mathrm{H}}_2$) and helium (He) gas charge strippers. A differential pumping system was constructed to confine ${\mathrm{H}}_2$ and He gases to a thickness sufficient for the charge state distributions to attain equilibrium. The mean charge states of ${}^{86}\mathrm{Kr}$ in ${\mathrm{H}}_2$ and He gases attained equilibrium at 25.1 and 23.2, respectively, whereas the mean charge state in ${\mathrm{N}}_2$ gas at equilibrium was estimated to be less than 20. The charge distributions are successfully reproduced by the cross sections of ionization and electron capture processes optimized by a fitting procedure.

Very few experimental techniques are useful for the direct observation of ultralow vertical emittance in electron storage rings. In this work, quantitative measurements of ultralow (pm rad) electron beam vertical emittance using a vertical undulator are presented. An undulator radiation model was developed using the measured magnetic field of the APPLE-II type undulator. Using calibrated experimental apparatus, a geometric vertical emittance of ${ϵ}_y=0.9\pm 0.3\mathrm{pm}\mathrm{rad}$ has been observed. These measurements could also inform modeling of the angular distribution of undulator radiation at high harmonics, for proposed diffraction-limited storage ring light sources.

Upgrading the integrated performance of the LHC, while preserving the quality of the physics data delivered to the experiments, is a real challenge for the high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). This paper will give an overview of the situation in terms of performance and so-called pile up density which directly impacts on the reconstruction efficiency of the primary vertices at the interaction point. Both the present HL-LHC baseline and its possible extension with the so-called crab-kissing scheme will be discussed in this context.

The emittance of the electron beam is crucial for Free-Electron Laser facilities: it has a strong influence on the lasing performance and on the total length of the accelerator. We present our procedure to measure and minimize the projected and slice emittance at the SwissFEL Injector Test Facility. The normalized slice emittance resolution achieved is about 3 nm and the longitudinal resolution is about 13 fs, with measurement errors estimated to be below 5%. After performing a full optimization we have obtained, for uncompressed beams, a slice emittance of about 200 nm for a beam charge of 200 pC, and a slice emittance of about 100 nm for 10 pC. These values are consistent with our simulations and are well below the requirements of the SwissFEL under construction at the Paul Scherrer Institute. At these bunch charges our measured slice emittances are, to our knowledge, the lowest reported so far for an electron linear accelerator.

In Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3779 (2001), a compact final focus system (FFS) was presented. This scheme was compared to the nonlocal chromatic correction FFS concluding with the superiority of the local system. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of the system to errors and its mitigation was missing in the comparison. In this paper, an extended comparison of the Compact Linear Collider local FFS and an improved nonlocal FFS is presented at 3 TeV and 500 GeV. We demonstrate that, at high energies, luminosity delivered by the ideal machine is no longer the most important figure of merit but the recovered luminosity after tuning with imperfections, where the improved traditional scheme shows a better performance. This result might have an important relevance also for ILC at 1 TeV.

A new scheme to generate narrow-band tunable terahertz (THz) radiation using a variant of the echo-enabled harmonic generation is analyzed. We show that by using an energy chirped beam, THz density modulation in the beam phase space can be produced with two lasers having the same wavelength. This removes the need for an optical parametric amplifier system to provide a wavelength-tunable laser to vary the central frequency of the THz radiation. The practical feasibility and applications of this scheme are demonstrated numerically with a start-to-end simulation using the beam parameters at the Shanghai Deep Ultraviolet Free-Electron Laser facility (SDUV). The central frequency of the density modulation can be continuously tuned by either varying the chirp of the beam or the momentum compactions of the chicanes. The influence of nonlinear rf chirp and longitudinal space charge effect have also been studied in our article. The methods to generate the THz radiation in SDUV with the new scheme and the estimation of the radiation power are also discussed briefly.

The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is designed to collide proton beams of unprecedented energy, in order to extend the frontiers of high-energy particle physics. During the first very successful running period in 2010–2013, the LHC was routinely storing protons at 3.5–4 TeV with a total beam energy of up to 146 MJ, and even higher stored energies are foreseen in the future. This puts extraordinary demands on the control of beam losses. An uncontrolled loss of even a tiny fraction of the beam could cause a superconducting magnet to undergo a transition into a normal-conducting state, or in the worst case cause material damage. Hence a multistage collimation system has been installed in order to safely intercept high-amplitude beam protons before they are lost elsewhere. To guarantee adequate protection from the collimators, a detailed theoretical understanding is needed. This article presents results of numerical simulations of the distribution of beam losses around the LHC that have leaked out of the collimation system. The studies include tracking of protons through the fields of more than 5000 magnets in the 27 km LHC ring over hundreds of revolutions, and Monte Carlo simulations of particle-matter interactions both in collimators and machine elements being hit by escaping particles. The simulation results agree typically within a factor 2 with measurements of beam loss distributions from the previous LHC run. Considering the complex simulation, which must account for a very large number of unknown imperfections, and in view of the total losses around the ring spanning over 7 orders of magnitude, we consider this an excellent agreement. Our results give confidence in the simulation tools, which are used also for the design of future accelerators.

In a medium energy proton synchrotron, strong enough partial Siberian snakes can be used to avoid both imperfection and vertical intrinsic depolarizing resonances. However, partial snakes tilt the stable spin direction away from vertical, which generates depolarizing resonances associated with horizontal tune. The relatively weak but numerous horizontal intrinsic resonances are the main source of the residual polarization losses. A pair of horizontal tune jump quads have been used in the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron to overcome these weak resonances. The locations of the two quads have to be chosen such that the disturbance to the beam optics is minimum. The emittance growth has to be mitigated for this method to work. In addition, this technique needs very accurate jump timing. Using two partial Siberian snakes, with vertical tune inside the spin tune gap and 80% polarization at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron injection, polarized proton beam had reached $1.5\times 10^{11}$ proton per bunch with 65% polarization. With the tune jump timing optimized and emittance preserved, more than 70% polarization with $2\times 10^{11}$ protons per bunch has been achieved. The polarization transport efficiency is close to 90%.

In a muon accelerator complex, a target is bombarded by a multi-MW proton beam to produce pions, which decay into the muons which are thereafter bunched, cooled, and accelerated. The front end of the complex captures those pions, then manipulates their phase space, and that of the muons into which they decay, to maximize the number of muons within the acceptance of the downstream systems. The secondary pion beam produced at the target is captured by a high field target solenoid that tapers down to a constant field throughout the rest of the front end. In this study we enhance the useful muon flux by introducing a new design of the longitudinal profile of the solenoid field at, and downstream of, the target. We find that the useful muon flux exiting the front end is larger when the field at the target is higher, the distance over which the field tapers down is shorter, and the field at the end of the taper is higher. We describe how the solenoid field profile impacts the transverse and longitudinal phase space of the beam and thereby leads to these dependencies.