Fixed target beams

The CERN SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) serves asLHC injector and provides beam for the North Area fixedtarget experiments. At low energy, the vertical acceptancebecomes critical with high intensity large emittance fixed tar-get beams. Optimizing the vertical available aperture is a keyingredient to optimize transmission and reduce activationaround the ring. During the 2016 run a tool was developed toprovide an automated local aperture scan around the entirering.The flux of particles slow extracted with the1/3inte-ger resonance from the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERNshould ideally be constant over the length of the extractionplateau, for optimum use of the beam by the fixed target ex-periments in the North Area. The extracted intensity is con-trolled in feed-forward correction of the horizontal tune viathe main SPS quadrupoles. The Mains power supply noiseat 50 Hz and harmonics is also corrected in feed-forwardby small amplitude tune modulation at the respective fre-quencies with a dedicated additional quadrupole circuit. Thecharacteristics of the SPS slow extracted spill in terms ofmacro structure and typical frequency content are shown.Other sources of perturbation were, however, also present in2016 which frequently caused the spill quality to be muchreduced