Observations of SPS Slow-Extracted Spill Quality Degradation and Possible Improvements

The SPS delivers slow extracted proton and heavy ion spills of several seconds to the North Area fixed target experiments with a very high duty factor. Reduced machine reproducibility due to magnetic history and power supply ripples on the main circuits lead however to frequent degradation of the spill duty factor. In this paper, the measured effect of the SPS magnetic history on spill quality and principal machine parameters is presented. Another detailed measurement campaign was aimed at characterising the frequency content and response of the spill to noise on the main power supplies ripples. The main findings of this study will also be reported. Finally, simulations of possible improvements based on the data acquired are discussed, as well as an extrapolation to the possible spill quality after the implementation of the improvements.