Overcoming a fast transverse instability by means of octupole-induced tune spread in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Abstract

During the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider commissioning in 2001 a fast transverse instability was observed on the ramp. In general this could be counteracted with increased chromaticity, resulting in Landau damping. However this method could not be applied around transition energy where chromaticities have to change sign. So octupoles were used near transition energy to create transverse Landau damping and avoid the transverse instability, emittance blowup, and beam loss. This paper describes the considerations that led to the present scheme, as well as experimental results.