Tracking simulations of shadowing electrostatic septum wires by means of bent crystals

The CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) slow extraction is a third integer resonant extraction and hence suffers from high losses at the electrostatic septum (ZS). This is one of the main limiting factors for the maximum number of Protons On Target (POT) deliverable from the SPS to the North Area (NA). A concept to significantly reduce the extraction losses via shadowing of the electrostatic septum wires using an upstream bent crystal has been proposed in [1], predicting a loss reduction of up to about 50% for the prototype system installed in 2018. Following the successful experimental demonstration of the concept with beam [2], detailed tracking simulations have been performed to fully understand the results obtained. Further insights, such as the effective ZS width and its alignment, could be deduced by exploiting the response of the extraction loss as a function of the two degrees of freedom of the crystal (position and angle). In this paper, the beam dynamics simulations are discussed together with the implementation of the bent crystal into the simulation framework. A comparison with measurements is presented before proposals for new configurations and parameters are discussed.