Stabilizing effect of a double-harmonic RF system in the CERN PS

Motivated by the discussions on scenarios for LHC upgrades, beam studies on the stability of flat bunches in a double-harmonic RF system have been conducted in the CERN Proton Synchrotron (PS). Injecting nearly nominal LHC beam intensity per cycle, 18 bunches are accelerated on harmonic h = 21 to 26GeV with the 10MHz RF system. On the flat-top, all bunches are then transformed to flat bunches by adiabatically adding RF voltage at h = 42 from a 20MHz cavity in anti-phase to the h = 21 system. The voltage ratio V (h42)/V (h21) of about 0.5 was set according to simulations. For the next 140 ms, longitudinal profiles show stable bunches in the double-harmonic RF bucket until extraction. Without the second harmonic component, coupled-bunch oscillations are observed. The flatness of the bunches along the batch is analyzed as a measure of the relative phase error between the RF systems due to beam loading. The results of beam dynamics simulations and their comparison with the measured data are presented.