Review of rest gas interaction at very low energies applied to the Extra Low Energy Antiproton ring ELENA

The Extremely Low ENergy Antiproton ring (ELENA) is a small synchrotron equipped with an electron cooler, which shall be constructed at CERN to decelerate antiprotons to energies as low as 100 keV. Scattering of beam particles on rest gas molecules may have a detrimental effect at such low energies and leads to stringent vacuum requirements. Within this contribution scattering of the stored beam on rest gas molecules is discussed for very low beam energies. It is important to carefully distinguish between antiprotons scattered out of the acceptance and lost, and those remaining inside the aperture to avoid overestimation of emittance blow-up. Furthermore, many antiprotons do not interact at all during the time they are stored in ELENA and hence this is not a multiple scattering process