3:30 pm Zoom
How Measuring 6D Beam Distributions Can Help Control Losses in High Power Accelerators
Kiersten Ruisard, Oak Ridge National Lab
Uncontrolled beam loss is an ever-present challenge in operation of high power accelerators. Although the lost particles represent a small fraction of the total beam power, they cause significant radio-activation in the beamline environment. One contributor to losses is beam halo, which consists of particles driven to high-amplitude orbits outside the beam core. To date, simulated beam evolution has not been shown to accurately predict the halo distribution. This talk highlights recent and on-going work at the SNS Beam Test Facility (BTF) to enable halo predictions by investigating the extant model/measurement discrepancy. We expect a significant improvement can be gained through better knowledge of the initial beam distribution. In particular, full knowledge of the 6D phase space distribution is typically not available but has implications for self-consistent evolution. The BTF study combines a novel full-and-direct 6D measurement with high dynamic range halo characterization. This talk will review initial insights from high-dimensional phase space measurements as well as outline steps towards the full halo-study program.