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2022 Status Report of the Advanced Wakefield Experiment AWAKE

The Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE) at CERN uses 6 cm long proton bunches extracted from the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at 400 GeV beam energy to drive high gradient plasma wakefields for the acceleration of electron bunches to 2 GeV within a 10 m length. Knowledge and control of the position of both copropagating beams is crucial for the operation of the experiment. Whilst the current electron beam position monitoring system at AWAKE can be used in the absence of the proton beam, the proton bunch signal dominates when both particle bunches are present simultaneously. A new technique based on the generation of Cherenkov diffraction radiation (ChDR) in a dielectric material placed in close proximity to the particle beam has been designed to exploit the large bunch length difference of the particle beams at AWAKE, 200 ps for protons versus a few ps for electrons, such that the electron signal dominates. Hence, this technique would allow for the position measurement of a short electron bunch in the presence of a more intense but longer proton bunch. The design considerations, numerical analysis and plans for tests at the CERN Linear Electron Accelerator for Research (CLEAR) facility are presented., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

The Beam-Gas Curtain or BGC is the baseline instrument for monitoring the concentricity of the LHC proton beam with a hollow electron beam for the hollow e-lens (HEL) beam halo suppression device which is part of the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade. The proof-of-principles experiments of this gas-jet monitor have now been developed into a prototype instrument which has been built for integration into the LHC ring and is now under phased installation for operation in the upcoming LHC run. This paper describes the challenges overcome to produce a gas-jet fluorescence monitor for the ultra-high vacuum accelerator environment. It also presents preliminary results from the installation of the instrument at CERN., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

At the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) the proton beam is supplied to the fixed target experiments in the North Area facility (NA) via a slow extraction process, taking place at 400 GeV. The monitoring of the spill quality during the extraction, lasting 4.8 seconds with the present SPS setup, is of high interest for minimising beam losses and providing the users with uniform proton-on-target rates. The monitor development challenges include the need for detecting, sampling, processing and publishing the data at rates ranging from few hundred Hz to support the present operation to several hundreds of MHz to serve future experiments proposed within the Physics Beyond Collider (PBC) programme. This paper will give an overview of the ongoing studies for optimizing the existing monitors performances and of the R dedicated to future developments. Different techniques are being explored, from Secondary Emission Monitors to Optical Transition Radiation (OTR), Gas Scintillation and Cherenkov detectors. Expected ultimate limitations from the various methods will be presented, together with 2022 experimental results, for example with a recently refurbished OTR detector., Proceedings of the 11th International Beam Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2022, Kraków, Poland

A gas jet beam profile monitor was designed for measuring the electron beam at the electron beam test stand (EBTS) for the Hollow electron lens (HEL) and the proton beam in the large hadron collider (LHC). It is partially installed in the LHC during the second long shutdown. The current monitor is tailored to the accelerator environment including vacuum, geometry, and magnetic field for both the EBTS and the LHC. It features a compact design, a higher gas jet density, and a wider curtain size for a better integration time and a larger detecting range. In this contribution, the commissioning of this monitor at the Cockcroft Institute will be discussed., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

For the accelerator-based future of high energy physics at the energy frontier, CERN started to investigate a 92 km circumference Future Circular Collider (FCC), as e⁺/e⁻ collider the FCC-ee will operate at beam energies up to 182.5 GeV. Beside the machine operational aspects, beam instrumentation will play a key role in verifying and optimizing the machine to achieve the ambitious beam parameters and quality. This paper gives a brief overview of the various challenges to develop the required beam instruments, with focus on beam position, beam size and bunch length measurements, and well as an outline of the planned R activities., Proceedings of the 65th ICFA Advanced Beam Dynamics Workshop on High Luminosity Circular e+e- Colliders, eeFACT2022, Frascati, Italy

In a gas jet monitor, a supersonic gas curtain is injected into the beam pipe and interacts with the charged particle beam. The monitor exploits fluorescence induced by beam-gas interactions, thus providing a minimally invasive transverse profile measurement. Such a monitor is being developed as part of the High Luminosity LHC upgrade at CERN. As a preliminary study, the fluorescence cross section of relevant gases must be measured for protons at 450 GeV and 6.8 TeV (i.e. the LHC injection and flat top energies). In these measurements, neon, or alternatively nitrogen gas, will be injected into the LHC vacuum pipe by a regulated gas valve to create an extended pressure bump. This work presents the optical detection system that was installed in 2022 in the LHC to measure luminescence cross-section and horizontal beam profile. Preliminary measurements of background light and first signals are presented in this paper., Proceedings of the 11th International Beam Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2022, Kraków, Poland

The Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE) at CERN investigates the Plasma-Wakefield acceleration of electrons driven by a relativistic proton bunch. After successfully demonstrating the acceleration process in the AWAKE Run 1, the experiment has now started the Run 2. The AWAKE Run 2 consists of several experimental periods that aim to demonstrate the feasibility of the AWAKE concept beyond the acceleration experiment, showing its feasibility as accelerator for particle physics application. As part of these developments, a dramatic effort in improving the AWAKE instrumentation is sustained. This contribution reports on the current developments of the instrumentation pool upgrade, including the digital camera system for transverse beam profile measurement, beam halo measurement and the spectrometer upgrade studies. The studies on the development of high-frequency beam position monitors are also described., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

"Fast Monte-CarlO approach to Coherence of Undulator Sources" (FOCUS) is a new GPU-based code to compute the transverse coherence of X-ray radiation from undulator sources. The code relies on scaled dimensionless quantities and analytic expressions of the electric field emitted by electrons in an undulator, obtained in the frequency domain under paraxial approximation (justified by the assumption of ultra-relativistic electrons) and free space propagation, with the addition of the resonance approximation. We describe the core structure of the code, which exploits GPUs for massively parallel computations. We validate our approach by direct comparison with SRW (Synchrotron Radiation Workshop) simulations. The benchmarks prove that FOCUS yields similar results with respect to SRW, while at the same time reducing the computation times by five orders of magnitude. Finally, we show examples of applications to beam size diagnostics. The aim of the code is to fast evaluating the transverse coherence properties of undulator X-ray radiation as a function of the electron beam parameters, and to support and help preparing more rigorous numerical simulations with traditional codes like SRW., Proceedings of the 11th International Beam Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2022, Kraków, Poland

In the Phase 2 of the AWAKE first experimental run (from May to November 2018), an electron beam was used to probe and test proton-driven wakefield accelera-tion in a rubidium plasma column. The witness electron bunches were produced using an RF-gun equipped with a Cs₂Te photocathode illuminated by a tailorable ultrafast ultraviolet (UV) laser pulse. The construction of the UV beam optical system enabled appropriate transverse beam shaping and control of its pulse duration, size, and position on the photocathode, as well as time delay with respect to the ionizing laser pulse that seeds the plasma wakefields in the proton bunches. Variable photocathode illumination provided the required flexibility to produce electron bunches with variable charge, emittance, and injection trajectory into the plasma column. In this work, we analyze the overall charge capture and shot-to-shot reproducibility of the proton-driven plasma wakefield accelerator with various UV illumination and electron bunch injection parameters., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

In recent years the potential of using Cherenkov Diffraction Radiation (ChDR) as a tool for non-invasive beam diagnostics has been thoroughly investigated. Although several theoretical models of ChDR have been developed, differences in their assumptions result in inconsistent predictions. The experimental verification is therefore needed in order to fully understand ranges of validity of available models. In this contribution we present a detailed theoretical study of the radiation yield as a function of the beam-radiator distance. Following identification of beam parameters and frequency range for which differences between the model predictions are most prominent, we compare theoretical estimates with the results of a dedicated experiment., Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand

The Beam Rate of Neutrals (BRAN) is a monitor that provides a relative luminosity measurement for the four LHC experiments. BRANs are used during operations as a tool to find and optimise collision and to cross-check experiments luminosity monitors. While each LHC experiments is equipped with BRANs, in this contribution we will focus on the new monitors installed for ATLAS and CMS that will replace the current ageing gas chambers during LHC run 3. These will also serve as as prototypes for the future High Luminosity LHC monitors that will need to sustain an even higher collision rate. A description of the BRAN as well as the first results obtained during the LHC Run 3 start-up will be presented., Proceedings of the 11th International Beam Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2022, Kraków, Poland

The AWAKE experiment studies the acceleration of electrons to multi-GeV levels driven by the plasma wakefield generated by an ultra-relativistic and high intensity proton bunch. The proton beam, being considerably more intense than the co-propagating electron bunch, perturbs the measurement of the electron beam position achieved via standard techniques. This contribution shows that the electrons position monitoring is possible by frequency discrimination, exploiting the large bunch length difference between the electron and proton beams. Simulations and a beam measurement hint, the measurement has to be carried out in a frequency regime of a few tens of GHz, which is far beyond the spectrum produced by the 1ns long (4 �� Gaussian) proton bunch. As operating a conventional Beam Position Monitor (BPM) in this frequency range is problematic, an innovative approach based on the emission of coherent Cherenkov Diffraction Radiation (ChDR) in dielectrics is being studied. After describing the monitor concept and design, we will report about the results achieved with a prototype system at the CERN electron facility CLEAR., Proceedings of the 10th International Beam Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2021, Pohang, Rep. of Korea

In this paper, CST simulations of the coherent Cherenkov Diffraction Radiation with a range of parameters for different dielectric target materials and geometries are discussed and compared with the theoretical investigation of the Polarization Current Approach to design a prototype of a radiator for the bunch length/profile monitor for AWAKE Run 2. It was found that the result of PCA theory and CST simulation are consistent with each other regarding the shape of the emitted ChDR cone., Proceedings of the 12th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2021, Campinas, SP, Brazil