Axial beam centroid and beam breakup (BBU) measurements were conducted on an 80 ns FWHM, intense relativistic electron bunch with an injected energy of 3.8 MV and current of 2.9 kA. The intense relativistic electron bunch is accelerated and transported through a nested solenoid and ferrite induction core lattice consisting of 64 elements, exiting the accelerator with a nominal energy of 19.8 MeV. The principal objective of these experiments is to quantify the coupling of the beam centroid motion to the BBU instability and validate the theory of this coupling for the first time. Time resolved centroid measurements indicate a reduction in the BBU amplitude, $⟨\xi ⟩$, of 19% and a reduction in the BBU growth rate ($\mathrm{\Gamma }$) of 4% by reducing beam centroid misalignments $\sim 50\%$ throughout the accelerator. An investigation into the contribution of the misaligned elements is made. An alignment algorithm is presented in addition to a qualitative comparison of experimental and calculated results which include axial beam centroid oscillations, BBU amplitude, and growth with different dipole steering.

The exponentially tapered beam position monitor has been proposed by Linnecar to produce a flat and wideband frequency response for beam position signals. However, it still has a large ringing fluctuation on the amplitude of the transfer function. This paper aims at improving the overall characteristics of the transfer function. With the help from the window function theory, we investigate the correlation between the shape of the electrode and the resulting transfer function. Finally, we propose a polynomial shape for the electrode that provides a much flatter response function. Three-dimensional results using the cst studio are also presented to demonstrate the validity of the polynomial shape even in more realistic conditions.

Laser plasma based accelerators have the potential to reduce dramatically the size and cost of future particle colliders and light sources. Production of high quality beams along with reproducibility, tunability, and efficiency are required for many applications. We present design principles for two-pulse colliding laser pulse injection mechanisms, which can meet these requirements. Simulations are used to determine the best conditions for the production of high quality beams: high charge, low energy spread, and low emittance. Simulations also allow access to the internal dynamics of the interaction, providing insight regarding further improvement of the beam quality. We find that a 20 pC beam can be accelerated to 300 MeV in 4 mm with only a few percent energy spread and transverse normalized emittance close to 1 mm mrad, using a 10 TW laser. We demonstrate that this design scales according to linear theory. Control of the laser pulse mode content and subsequent evolution in the plasma channel are shown to be critical for achieving the highest beam quality.

We study the stability of particles in slip-stacking configuration, used to nearly double proton beam intensity at Fermilab. We introduce universal area factors to calculate the available phase space area for any set of beam parameters without individual simulation. We find perturbative solutions for stable particle trajectories. We establish Booster beam quality requirements to achieve 97% slip-stacking efficiency. We show that slip-stacking dynamics directly correspond to the driven pendulum and to the system of two standing-wave traps moving with respect to each other.

Seed lasers are employed to improve the temporal coherence of free-electron laser (FEL) light. However, when these seed pulses are short relative to the particle bunch, the noisy, temporally incoherent radiation from the unseeded electrons can overwhelm the coherent, seeded radiation. In this paper, a technique to seed a particle bunch with an external laser is presented in which a new mechanism to improve the contrast between coherent and incoherent free electron laser radiation is employed together with a novel, simplified echo-seeding method. The concept relies on a combination of longitudinal space charge wakes and an echo-seeding technique to make a short, coherent pulse of FEL light together with noise background suppression. Several different simulation codes are used to illustrate the concept with conditions at the soft x-ray free-electron laser in Hamburg, FLASH.

The possible use of open cell conductive foams in high synchrotron radiation particle accelerators is considered. Available materials and modeling tools are reviewed, potential pros and cons are discussed, and preliminary conclusions are drawn.

The Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou is an ion cooler storage ring facility in China’s Institute of Modern Physics. The beams are accumulated, electron cooled, accelerated, and extracted from the main cooler storage ring (CSRm) to the experimental ring or different terminals. The heavy ion beams are easily lost at the vacuum chamber along the CSRm when it is used to accumulate intermediate charge state particles. The vacuum pressure bump due to the ion-induced desorption in turn leads to an increase in beam loss rate. In order to avoid the complete beam loss, the collimation system is investigated and planned to be installed in the CSRm. First, the beam loss distribution is simulated considering the particle charge exchanged process. Then the collimation efficiency of the lost particles is calculated and optimized under different position and geometry of the collimators and beam emittance and so on. Furthermore, the beam orbit distortion that is caused by different types of errors in the ring will affect the collimation efficiency. The linearized and inhomogeneous equations of particle motion with these errors are derived and solved by an extended transfer matrix method. Actual magnet alignment errors are adopted to investigate the collimation efficiency of the lost particles in the CSRm. Estimation of the beam loss positions and optimization of the collimation system is completed by a newly developed simulation program.

Interior surfaces of niobium cavities used in superconducting radio frequency accelerators are now obtained by buffered chemical polish and/or electropolish. Laser polishing is a potential alternative, having advantages of speed, freedom from noxious chemistry and availability of in-process inspection. We studied the influence of the laser power density and laser beam raster rate on the surface topography. These two factors need to be combined carefully to smooth the surface without damage. Computational modeling was used to estimate the surface temperature and gain insight into the mechanism of laser polishing. Power spectral density analysis of surface topography measurements shows that laser polishing can produce smooth topography similar to that obtained by electropolish. This is a necessary first step toward introducing laser polishing as an alternative to the currently practiced chemical polishing.

An advanced setup for vertical electropolishing of superconducting radio-frequency niobium elliptical cavities has been installed at CEA Saclay. Cavities are vertically electropolished with circulating standard HF-${\mathrm{HF}\text{−}\mathrm{H}}_2{\mathrm{SO}}_4$ electrolytes. Parameters such as voltage, cathode shape, acid flow, and temperature have been investigated. A low voltage (between 6 and 10 V depending on the cavity geometry), a high acid flow ($25\mathrm{L}/\min$), and a low acid temperature ($20°\mathrm{C}$) are considered as promising parameters. Such a recipe has been tested on single-cell and nine-cell International Linear Collider (ILC) as well as 704 MHz five-cell Super Proton Linac (SPL) cavities. Single-cell cavities showed similar performances at 1.6 K being either vertically or horizontally electropolished. The applied baking process provides similar benefit. An asymmetric removal is observed with faster removal in the upper half-cells. Multicell cavities (nine-cell ILC and five-cell SPL cavities) exhibit a standard $Q_0$ value at low and medium accelerating fields though limited by power losses due to field emitted electrons.

Silicon woodpile photonic crystals provide a base structure with which to build a three-dimensional dielectric waveguide system for high-gradient laser-driven acceleration. To realize an on-chip woodpile laser accelerator, a key component is the power coupler to deliver laser power to the fundamental accelerating mode. The woodpile waveguide is periodically loaded in the longitudinal direction; therefore simple cross-sectional mode profile matching is not sufficient to launch the accelerating mode appropriately and will result in significant scattering loss. Several traveling-wave coupler design schemes developed for multicell radio frequency cavity accelerators can be adapted to the woodpile accelerator coupler design. This paper presents design procedures and results using these methods. We present simulations indicating near 100% power transmission between the transverse electric mode of a silicon-guide side coupler and the transverse–magnetic-like accelerating mode of a woodpile waveguide. The coupler launches a full traveling-wave propagation of the accelerating mode, which maintains its propagation quality over long waveguide structures, and provides better tolerance on the structure fabrication uncertainty and material breakdown than standing-wave coupling.

The nonlinear dynamics of a circular accelerator such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may significantly impact its performance. As the LHC progresses to more challenging regimes of operation it is to be expected that the nonlinear single particle dynamics in the transverse planes will play an increasing role in limiting the reach of the accelerator. As such it is vital that the nonlinear sources are well understood. The nonlinear fields of a circular accelerator may be probed through measurement of the amplitude detuning: the variation of tune with single particle emittance. This quantity may be assessed experimentally by exciting the beam to large amplitudes with kicks, and obtaining the tunes and actions from turn-by-turn data at Beam Position Monitors. The large amplitude excitations inherent to such a measurement also facilitate measurement of the dynamic aperture from an analysis of beam losses following the kicks. In 2012 these measurements were performed on the LHC Beam 2 at injection energy (450 GeV) with the nominal magnetic configuration. Nonlinear coupling was also observed. A second set of measurements were performed following the application of corrections for $b_4$ and $b_5$ errors. Analysis of the experimental results, and a comparison to simulation are presented herein.

In 2012 the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider collided uranium-uranium ions with a particle energy of $96.4\mathrm{GeV}/\text{nucleon}$ and copper-gold (Cu-Au) ions at $100\mathrm{GeV}/\text{nucleon}$ for the first time. 3-dimensional stochastic cooling became operational for the first time and greatly enhanced the luminosity. Together with a new lattice configuration, we achieved a burn-off dominated uranium beam lifetime at physics stores. In the asymmetric Cu-Au collision, we observed an increased Cu beam loss stemming from different intrabeam-scattering and cooling rates between the Au and Cu ion bunches. By intentionally slowing down the cooling rate for the Au beam at the beginning of store, we reduced the Cu beam loss and maximized the integrated luminosity.

The residual activity induced in particle accelerators is a serious issue from the point of view of radiation safety as the long-lived radionuclides produced by fast or moderated neutrons and impact protons cause problems of radiation exposure for staff involved in the maintenance work and when decommissioning the facility. This paper presents activation studies of the magnets and collimators in the High Energy Beam Transport line of the European Spallation Source due to the backscattered neutrons from the target and also due to the direct proton interactions and their secondaries. An estimate of the radionuclide inventory and induced activation are predicted using the GEANT4 code.

Flat beams—beams with asymmetric transverse emittances—have important applications in novel light-source concepts and advanced-acceleration schemes and could possibly alleviate the need for damping rings in lepton colliders. Over the last decade, a flat beam generation technique based on the conversion of an angular-momentum-dominated beam was proposed and experimentally tested. In this paper we explore the production of compressed flat beams. We especially investigate and optimize the flat beam transformation for beams with substantial fractional energy spread. We use as a simulation example the photoinjector of Fermilab’s Advanced Superconducting Test Accelerator. The optimizations of the flat beam generation and compression at Advanced Superconducting Test Accelerator were done via start-to-end numerical simulations for bunch charges of 3.2 nC, 1.0 nC, and 20 pC at $\sim 37\mathrm{MeV}$. The optimized emittances of flat beams with different bunch charges were found to be $0.25\mu \mathrm{m}$ (emittance ratio is $\sim 400$), $0.13\mu \mathrm{m}$, 15 nm before compression, and $0.41\mu \mathrm{m}$, $0.20\mu \mathrm{m}$, 16 nm after full compression, respectively, with peak currents as high as 5.5 kA for a $3.2\text{−}\mathrm{nC}$ flat beam. These parameters are consistent with requirements needed to excite wakefields in asymmetric dielectric-lined waveguides or produce significant photon flux using small-gap micro-undulators.

An electron linac using a $C$-band rf frequency, 5.712 GHz, has enabled us to obtain an acceleration gradient of more than $35\mathrm{MV}/\mathrm{m}$ reliably. A $C$-band accelerator system has been developed and constructed for the compact x-ray FEL facility, SACLA, in order to fit within the available site length at SPring-8, and to reduce construction costs. An accelerator unit consists of two 1.8 m-long accelerator structures, a cavity-type rf pulse compressor and a 50 MW pulsed klystron. In order to achieve a compact rf source and to obtain extremely stable rf fields in the accelerator structures, an oil-filled, high-voltage pulse modulator combined with an extremely stable, inverter-type, high voltage charger was developed. SACLA uses 64 sets of these accelerator units in order to achieve a final beam energy of 8.5 GeV. After rf conditioning for 1 700 hours, the maximum acceleration gradient achieved was $38\mathrm{MV}/\mathrm{m}$. The typical trip rate for each accelerator unit at $35\mathrm{MV}/\mathrm{m}$ and 30 pps is about once per day. Dark current from the accelerator structures is less than 5 pC, which causes a negligible effect on the beam monitors. The phase and amplitude stability of the rf fields were measured to be 0.03 degree and 0.01% rms, respectively, which is sufficient for the XFEL operation of SACLA. Since the first beam commissioning in 2011, the $C$-band accelerator has demonstrated fairly stable performance under continuous operation for 20 000 hours.

Three-dimensional simulation codes genesis and opc are used to investigate the dependence of the resonator stability of free-electron laser (FEL) oscillators on the stability parameter, laser wavelength, outcoupling hole size and mirror tilt. We find that to have stable lasing over a wide range of wavelengths, the FEL cavity configuration should be carefully chosen. Broadly, the concentric configuration gives near-Gaussian modes and the best performance. At intermediate configurations the dominant mode often switches to a higher-order mode, which kills lasing. For the same reason, the outcoupled power can also be less. We have constructed a simple analytic model to study resonator stability which gives results that are in excellent agreement with the simulations. This suggests that modes in FEL oscillators are determined more by the cavity configuration and radiation propagation than by the details of the FEL interaction. We find (as in experiments at the CLIO FEL) that tilting the mirror can, for some configurations, lead to more outcoupled power than a perfectly aligned mirror because the mode is now a more compact higher-order mode, which may have implications for the mode quality for user experiments. Finally, we show that the higher-order mode obtained is usually a single Gauss-Laguerre mode, and therefore it should be possible to filter out the mode using suitable intracavity elements, leading to better FEL performance.

We realized a variable-period permanent-magnet helical undulator with high ($\sim 1\mathrm{T}$) field amplitude, which is almost constant over undulator periods of 23–26 mm. Each undulator period has four modular sections of iron poles and permanent magnets embedded in nonmagnetic disks with holes along the undulator axis. Modular plates undergo a longitudinal repulsive force from the magnetic field pressure and the spring coils between modular plates. The undulator period can thus be controlled by mechanically changing the end plate longitudinal position. This compact design is suitable for tabletop terahertz free electron lasers.