Commissioning of the ELENA Electrostatic Transfer Lines for the Antimatter Facility at CERN

ELENA is a small synchrotron ring that decelerates antiprotons down to a kinetic energy of 100 keV. With an experimental complex capable of housing up to 9 different experiments operating simultaneously, the transfer line design needed to be highly flexible. The low energy of the beam transported allowed the exploitation of electrostatic devices instead of magnets, to simplify design, production and operation. This contribution presents the systematic characterisation of the beam optics at the different experimental handover locations during beam commissioning using H⁻ ions from an external source, as well as the performance of the lines in operation with antiprotons. Finally, the effect of stray fields created by the experimental setup will be presented and compared with the first measurements.