Beam measurements of the SPS longitudinal impedance

Longitudinal instabilities are one of the main limitationsin the CERN SPS to reach the beam parameters requiredfor the High Luminosity LHC project. In preparation tothe SPS upgrade, possible remedies are studied by perform-ing macroparticle simulations using the machine impedancemodel obtained from electromagnetic simulations and mea-surements. To benchmark the impedance model, the resultsof simulations are compared with various beam measure-ments. In this study, the reactive part of the impedance wasprobed by measuring the quadrupole frequency shift withintensity, obtained from bunch length oscillations at mis-matched injection into the SPS. This method was appliedover many last years to follow up the evolution of the SPSimpedance, injecting bunches with the same bunch length.A novel approach, giving significantly more information,consists in varying the injected bunch length. The compari-son of these measurements with macroparticle simulationsallowed to test the existing model and identify some missingSPS impedance and to obtain its possible dependence onfrequency