First machine development results with HL-LHC crab cavities in the SPS

Crab cavities are a critical component within the High Luminosity upgrade project for the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). It is foreseen to use crab cavities in order to compensate the geometric luminosity reduction factor (reduction of the luminous region at the Interaction Point [IP]) due to the beam crossing angle (required for minimizing the impact of the long range beam-beam effects on the single particle beam dynamics) and increase the number of collisions per bunch crossing. In 2018 the first beam tests of crab cavities with protons were performed in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN. Two vertical superconducting cavities of the Double Quarter Wave (DQW) type were fabricated and installed in the SPS to verify some key components of the cavity design and operation. This paper will present some of the first results relating to the proton beam dynamics in the presence of crab cavities.