The PS Upgrade Programme: Recent Advances

The LHC Injectors Upgrade project (LIU) has been initiated to improve the performances of the existing injector complex at CERN to match the future requirements of the HL-LHC. In this framework, the Proton Synchrotron (PS) will undergo fundamental changes for many of its main systems: the injection energy will be increased to reduce space-charge effects, the transverse damper will be improved to cope with transverse instabilities the RF systems will be upgraded to accelerate higher beam intensity and brightness. These hardware improvements are triggered by a series of studies meant to identify the most critical performance bottlenecks, like space charge, impedances, longitudinal and transverse instabilities, as well as electron-cloud. Additionally, alternative production schemes for the LHC-type beams have been proposed and implemented to circumvent some of the present limitations. A summary of the most recent advances of the studies, as well as the proposed hardware improvements is given.