Advances in the Understanding and Operations of Superconducting Colliders

Chromaticity drift is a well-known and more or less understood phenomenon in superconducting colliders such as the Tevatron. Less known is the effect of tune and coupling drift, also observed in the Tevatron during injection. Recently, in the context of the Tevatron collider run II, extensive studies of chromaticity, tune and coupling drifts were conducted to improve Tevatron performance. The studies included not only beam studies but also extensive off-line magnetic measurements on spare Tevatron dipoles. Some of these measurements were conducted in collaboration with Cern. Cern’s interest in multipole drifts is related to the future LHC, which will have similar issues. The following will report on the results of these studies. A new result, which will be presented here also, is related to fast drifts occurring in the first few seconds of the injection porch. These fast drifts were observed first in the Tevatron and efforts are underway to explain them. The author will also attempt to broaden the discussion to include the discussion of drift effects in the accelerating fields of superconducting linear accelerators.