Experimental studies with low transition energy optics in the SPS

The optics of the SPS can be tuned to lower transition energy such that the slippage factor at injection is raised by a factor of almost 3. From theory, an increase of the intensity thresholds for transverse mode coupling, longitudinal coupled bunch and longitudinal instabilities due to the loss of Landau damping can be expected. In this paper, experimental studies in the SPS with single bunches of protons with intensities of up to 3.5e11 p/b on the flat bottom and at 450 GeV/c are presented. Longitudinal instabilities were studied with LHC-type beams with 50 ns spacing and injected intensities up to 1.8e11 p/b. The measurements address the increase of intensity thresholds and the achievable transverse emittances in the new low gamma transition optics with respect to the nominal SPS optics. The obtained results are compared with numerical simulations.