Beam Dynamics Observations of the 2015 High Intensity Scrubbing Runs at the Cern Sps

Beam quality degradation caused by e-cloud effects has been identified as one of the main performance limitations for high intensity LHC beams with 25 ns bunch spacing in the SPS. In view of the beam parameters targeted with the LHC injectors upgrade (LIU) project, about two weeks of SPS machine time in 2015 were devoted to dedicated scrubbing runs with high intensity LHC 25 ns and dedicated 'doublet' beams in order to study the achievable reduction of e-cloud effects and quantify the consequent beam performance improvements. This paper describes the main observations concerning the coherent instabilities and beam dynamics limitations encountered as well as a detailed characterisation of the performance reach with the highest beam intensity presently available from the pre-injectors.