Longitudinal Tomographic Reconstruction of LHC-type Bunches in the SPS

Longitudinal tomographic reconstruction on the basis of measured profiles is an important technique to measure the particle density distribution of a bunch in longitudinal phase space. This measurement technique, well established in all circular machines of the PS complex, has been applied to the SPS for the first time. Due to recent improvements of the data acquisition of the signals from the longitudinal pick-ups in the SPS and a new LHC type wall current monitor, the quality of the bunch profiles is now more appropriate for tomography. Longitudinal beam signals from the wall current pick-ups APWL-10 and WC-2 are used as input for the reconstruction algorithm. It is shown that, due to short bunches and long cables in the SPS, the correction of the signal with the transfer function of the transmission system is indispensable. The analysis of the longitudinal distribution of a batch of 48 bunches of an LHC type beam at injection into the SPS, averaged over more than ten cycles, showed that any systematic variation of the bunch parameters along the batch is shadowed by statistical errors due to the quality of the measured bunch profiles. Avoiding the long coaxial cables from the SPS tunnel to the surface is a crucial issue for improving the quality of the bunch profiles suitable for tomographic reconstruction.