Beam-beam effects in space charge dominated ion beams

TL;DR

This paper investigates how beam-beam interactions combined with large space charge effects reduce beam lifetime in low-energy RHIC operations, through experiments and simulations, and suggests alternative operational strategies.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data and simulation insights into beam-beam effects under space charge dominance, proposing improved operational points for future low-energy runs.

Findings

Beam-beam interactions significantly reduce beam lifetime at low energies.

Simulations support experimental observations of beam degradation.

Proposed alternative working points aim to mitigate lifetime reductions.

Abstract

During low-energy operations below the regular injection energy in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), significant beam lifetime reductions due to the beam-beam interaction in conjunction with large space charge tune shifts have been observed. We report on dedicated experiments aimed at understanding this phenomenon as well as preliminary simulation results, and propose alternative working points to improve the beam lifetime in future lowenergy RHIC runs.