DOE OSTI2011
We report the results of experiments on a 'fast beam-ion instability' at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). This ion instability, which can arise even when the ions are not trapped over multiple beam passages, will likely be important for many future accelerators. In our experiments, we filled the ALS storage ring with helium gas, raising the pressure approximately two orders of magnitude above the nominal pressure. With gaps in the bunch train large enough to avoid conventional (multi-turn) ion trapping, we observed a factor of 2-3 increase in the vertical beam size along with coherent beam oscillations which increased along the bunch train. Ion trapping has long been recognized as a potential limitation in electron storage rings. The ions, generated by beam-gas collisions, become trapped in the negative potential of the beam and accumulate over multiple beam passages. The trapped ions are then observed to cause a number of deleterious effects such as an increasing beam phase space, a broadening and shifting of the beam transverse oscillation frequencies (tunes), collective beam instabilities, and beam lifetime reductions. All of these effects are of concern for the next generation of accelerators, such as the B-factories or damping rings for future linear colliders, which will store high beam currents with closely spaced bunches and ultra-low beam emittances. One of the standard solutions used to prevent ion trapping is to include a gap in the bunch train which is long compared to the bunch spacing. In this case, the ions are first strongly-focused by the passing electron bunches and then over-focused in the gap. With a sufficiently large gap, the ions can be driven to large amplitudes where they form a diffuse halo and do not affect the beam. In this paper, we describe experiments that study a new regime of transient ion instabilities predicted to arise in future electron storage rings, and linacs with bunch trains. These future rings and linacs, which will be operated with higher beam currents, small transverse beam emittances, and long bunch trains, will use ion clearing gaps to prevent conventional ion trapping. But, while the ion clearing gap may suppress the conventional ion instabilities, it will not suppress a transient beam-ion instability where ions generated and trapped during the passage of a single train lead to a fast instability. While both conventional and transient ion instabilities have the same origin, namely ions produced by the beam, they have different manifestations and, more importantly, the new transient instability can arise even after the conventional ion instability is cured. This new instability is called the 'Fast Beam-Ion Instability' (FBII). In many future rings, the FBII is predicted to have very fast growth rates, much faster than the damping rates of existing and proposed transverse feedback systems, and thus is a potential limitation. To study the FBII, we performed experiments at the ALS, a 1.5 GeV electron storage ring. At the nominal ALS pressure of about 0.24 nTorr, the FBII is not evident. To study the instability, we intentionally added helium gas to the storage-ring vacuum system until the residual gas pressure was increased about 80 nTorr. This brought the predicted growth rate of the instability at least an order of magnitude above the growth rate of conventional multibunch instabilities driven by the RF cavities and above the damping rate of the transverse feedback system (TFB) in the ALS and, thereby, established conditions very similar to those in a future storage ring. We then filled the ring with a relatively short train of bunches, suppressing conventional ion instabilities. In the following, we will first briefly describe This paper describes the experiment and results in more detail.
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