Intensity limitations due to space charge for bunch compression in synchrotrons

Abstract

Bunch compression achieved via a fast bunch rotation in longitudinal phase space is a well-accepted scheme to generate short, intense ion bunches for various applications. During bunch compression, coherent beam instabilities and incoherent single particle resonances can occur because of increasing space charge, resulting in an important limitation for the bunch intensity. We present an analysis of the relevant space charge driven beam instability and resonance phenomena during bunch compression. A coupled longitudinal-transverse envelope approach is compared with particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Two distinct cases of crossing are discussed and applied to the GSI SIS-18 heavy-ion synchrotron. It is shown that during bunch compression, the 90° condition of phase advance is associated with a fourth order single particle resonance and the 120° condition with the recently discovered dispersion-induced instability. The agreement between the envelope and PIC results indicates that the stop band is defined by the 120° dispersion instability, which should be avoided during bunch compression.