Beam Instabilities studies at transition crossing in the CERN Proton Synchrotron

The CERN PS crosses transition energy at about 6 GeV by using a second order gamma jump performed with special quadrupoles. However, for high-intensity beams, and in particular the single bunch beam for the neutron Time-of-Flight facility, a controlled longitudinal emittance blowup is still needed to prevent a fast single-bunch vertical instability from developing near transition. A series of studies have been done in the PS in 2008 to measure the beam behaviour near transition energy for different settings of the gamma transition jump. The purpose of this paper is to compare those measurements with simulations results from the HEADTAIL code, which should allow to understand better the different mechanisms involved and maybe improve the transition crossing.