Review of recent work on electron cooling at LEAR

The Low-Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) is expected to be used as an accumulator in the frame work of the LHC lead-ion project. This implies at first that the electron-cooled ions have a lifetime which is longer than the stacking time. On the other hand, in order to improve the electron-cooling time we expect to make use of large electron beam intensities, of the order of 0.5 A, at relativistic parameter b = v/c = 0.09. With such constraints the electron beam density is rather large so the induced space-charge forces become detrimental to the cooling process itself. A neutralization of the electron beam, which aims to reduce the effects of the space-charge forces, is therefore desirable. This paper describes the measurements made on the cooling and lifetimes and on the neutralization technique implemented on the LEAR electron cooler.