CERN PS Kicker for Proton Injection: from Beam-Based Waveform Measurements to Hardware Improvements

For 2017 operation, the termination mode of the CERN Proton Synchrotron (PS) horizontal injection kicker was permanently changed to short-circuited, to be compliant with the future performances requested by the LHC Injectors Upgrade (LIU) project. An extensive campaign of measurements was performed through a dedicated beam-based technique. The measurements identified possibilities for optimisation of the kicker system and were fundamental to properly tune the PSpice simulation model of the kicker, as well as for validating the hardware changes. The model was finally used to estimate the horizontal emittance growth for the future injection schemes in the PS.