The Nature of Transverse Beam Instabilities at Injection in the Fermilab Main Ring

Abstract

Transverse beam instabilities have been observed in the Fermilab Main Ring since 1972. It was well controlled by two active feedback systems until the last fix target run in 1991. The current upgrade of accelerator facilities, where the replacement of the Main Ring by the Main Injector will allow acceleration of higher proton intensities, makes the importance of this issue surface again. Experimental studies were conducted to understand the nature and the cause of these transverse beam instabilities. The interplay between accelerator parameters and the growth rate of transverse beam oscillations is investigated. Some previously puzzling behavior of the Main Ring is now understood because of the knowledge gained from these studies. Experimental techniques were implemented to measure some important parameters of the Main Ring, such as the vertical impedance, bunch form factor, and the wake f~nction. Empirical theory is devised to understand the coupled bunch instability with many distributed gaps, and a satisfactory agreement is obtained between the analysis and the measured data. The cause of the transverse beam instabilities is identified to be the resistive wall impedance. Anomalous behavior in the frequency dependence of the impedance below the MHz range suggests that impedance sources other than the resistive wall also exist in the Main Ring. The performance of two active feedback systems is found to be inadequate to meet the goal of the Main Injector accelerator upgrade. Suggestions for hardware improvements and the choice of accelerator parameters are given.