THREE-BEAM INSTABILITY IN THE LHC

In the LHC, a transverse instability is regularly observed at 4TeV right after the beta-squeeze, when the beams are separated by about their ten transverse rms sizes [1-3], and only one of the two beams is seen as oscillating. So far only a single hypothesis is consistent with all the observations and basic concepts, one about a third beam - an electron cloud, generated by the two proton beams in the high-beta areas of the interaction regions. The instability results from a combined action of the cloud nonlinear focusing and impedance.