Improved Low-Energy Optics Control for Transverse Emittance Preservation at the CERN Proton Synchrotron

Preservation of the transverse emittances across the CERN accelerator chain is an important requirement for beams produced for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the CERN Proton Synchrotron (PS), high brightness LHC-type beams are stored on a long flat bottom for up to 1.2 seconds. During this storage time, direct space charge effects may lead to resonance crossing and subsequent growth of the transverse emittances. Previous studies showed an important emittance increase when the PS working point is moved near integer tune values. Subsequent simulation studies confirmed that this observation is caused by an interplay of space charge effects and the optics beatings induced by the Low Energy Quadrupoles (LEQ). A new optics configuration using these quadrupoles to reduce the optics beating and the emittance growth was developed and experimentally validated. The results of simulation and experimental studies are presented in this contribution.