Using ac dipoles to localize sources of beam coupling impedance

The beam coupling impedance is one of the main sources of beam instabilities and emittance blow up in circular accelerators. A refined machine impedance evaluation is therefore required in order to understand and model intensity dependent effects and instabilities that may limit the machine performance. For this reason, many impedance source localization techniques have been developed. In this work we present the impedance localization technique based on the observation of phase advance versus intensity at the beam position monitors using ac dipoles to force betatron oscillations. We present analytical formulas for the interpretation of measurements together with simulations to benchmark and illustrate the equations. Studies on the method accuracy for different Fourier transform algorithms are presented as well as first exploratory measurements performed in the LHC.