Reduction of Resonant Slow Extraction Losses with Shadowing of Septum Wires by a Bent Crystal

A new experiment, SHiP, is being studied at CERN to investigate the existence of three Heavy Neutral Leptons in order to give experimental proof to the proposed neutrino minimal Standard Model. High-intensity slow-extraction of protons from the SPS is a pre-requisite for SHiP. The experiment requires a resonant extraction with in a 7.2 s cycle, and about 4·10¹³ protons extracted at 400 GeV in a 1 s flat-top, to achieve the needed 2·10²⁰ protons on target in five years. Although the SPS has delivered this in the past to the CNGS experiment with fast extraction, for SHiP beam losses and activation of the SPS electrostatic extraction septum (ZS) could be a serious performance limitation, since the target number of protons to resonantly extract per year is a factor of two higher than ever achieved before and a factor of four than ever reached with the third-integer slow extraction. In this paper, a novel extraction technique to significantly reduce the losses at the ZS is proposed, based on the use of a bent crystal to shadow the septum wires. Theoretical concepts are developed, the performance gain quantified and a possible layout proposed.