Creation and Storage of Long and Flat Bunches in the LHC

To maximize the luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the collision of particle bunches with a uniform longitudinal particle density is considered for a future upgrade. The benefits of such bunches and their generation by means of special longitudinal beam manipulations are presented in this report. Three possible options are analyzed with respect to their potential luminosity gain at the beam-beam limit: short rectangular bunches held by radio frequency (RF) harmonics using multiples of the nominal RF frequency of 400.8MHz, long and flat bunches held by multiples of 40.08MHz, and so-called superbunches, confined by barrier buckets. The comparison of the three different approaches shows that flat bunches, with an intermediate bunch length of the order of several meters, are capable of producing a comparable luminosity to superbunches, while avoiding most of their inherent disadvantages. Possible schemes to create the bunches with uniform line density are studied and a longitudinal manipulation to combine a batch of ordinary bunches into a long and flat bunch is proposed. These RF gymnastics are based on well-proven techniques such as batch compression and bunch pair merging. Their advantages and disadvantages, including optimization with respect to degradation of the longitudinal particle density, are discussed in detail. Special attention is paid to the investigation of collective e ects due to the large line charge density and the influence of the beam on the RF installation is also studied.