Study of Beam Synchronization at JLEIC

TL;DR

This paper investigates synchronization schemes for electron and ion bunches in JLEIC, addressing the challenge of timing differences caused by varying ion energies and relativistic effects.

Contribution

It proposes and analyzes methods to synchronize colliding bunches across a wide energy range in the JLEIC collider.

Findings

Identified the impact of ion energy variation on bunch timing

Developed synchronization schemes for different energy levels

Demonstrated feasibility of maintaining collision timing

Abstract

The ion collider ring of Jefferson Lab Electron-Ion Collider (JLEIC) accommodates a wide range of ion energies, from 20 to 100 GeV for protons or from 8 to 40 GeV per nucleon for lead ions. In this medium energy range, ions are not fully relativistic, which means values of their relativistic beta are slightly below 1, leading to an energy dependence of revolution time of the collider ring. On the other hand, electrons with energy 3 GeV and above are already ultra-relativistic such that their speeds are effectively equal to the speed of light. The difference in speeds of colliding electrons and ions in JLEIC, when translated into a path-length difference necessary to maintain the same timing between electron and ion bunches, is quite large. In this paper, we explore schemes for synchronizing the electron and ion bunches at a collision point as the ion energy is varied.