Simulation study of electron cloud build up in the SPS MKD kickers

During the 2008 run, an unusual behavior characterizing pressure and temperature increase in some of the dump kickers of the SPS was noticed. In particular, it was observed that 1) the MKDV2 kicker would exhibit maximum heating with 75 ns spaced LHC beams and 2) the pressure rise was specially critical in MKDV1 in presence of 50 ns spaced LHC beams [1]. While the anomalous heating of MKDV2 with 75 ns beams could be tentatively explained by the denser beam current spectrum that would more likely hit one of the kicker impedance peaks, the fast pressure rise in MKDV1 with 50 ns spaced beams was ascribed to a surface effect, namely beam induced multipacting leading to electron cloud formation. This report summarizes a simulation study that was done in order to check whether the electron cloud behavior in the dump kickers could explain the experimental observations.