Helical dipole partial Siberian snake for the AGS

Abstract

Overcoming depolarization resonances in medium class synchrotrons (3 to 50 GeV) is one of the key issues in accelerating a highly polarized proton beam up to very high energies. Since such synchrotrons, including the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) and the J-PARC Main Ring, generally do not have sufficiently long straight sections to accommodate full Siberian snakes with reasonable beam excursions, the practical solution is to use partial Siberian snakes that rotate the particle spin about a horizontal axis by a fraction of 180 degrees. For the AGS, we designed and installed a new partial Siberian snake consisting of a helical dipole magnet with a double pitch structure. The helical structure reduced the amount of transverse coupling as compared to that achieved by the previous solenoidal partial snake. This coupling led to partial depolarization at certain energies from horizontal betatron oscillations. The helical magnetic field in the snake magnet was calculated using a 3D magnetic field code TOSCA, and was optimized by segmenting the helical pitch and varying the lengths of the segments. Fabrication errors were checked and verified to be within required tolerances. Finally, the transverse field was measured by rotating harmonic coils. After installation, we achieved a 37.5% improvement in polarization - from 40% with the old solenoid to 55% with the new helical snake, thereby demonstrating that the helical partial snake is an effective device to suppress depolarization resonances in medium-sized synchrotrons.