SPACE-CHARGE 2015 Workshop, 23-27 March, Oxford

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Last week the Space-Charge 2015 workshop was held at the Trinity College in Oxford. This historic venue has hosted about 57 scientists from all around the world to discuss different aspects of Space Charge effects in accelerators from experiments, simulations and analytical calculations.
There were interesting presentations to review the development and status of space charge specialised computing codes (PIC based codes and also kick approximation based codes). Dr Christopher Prior (RAL) presented an overview (in a nutshell) of codes for space charge simulations for both Linacs and rings.
There were several presentations and discussions on a wide variety of machines:

  • Studies of space charge induced beam losses and emittance growth for the LHC injection chain: PSB (PS Booster), PS and SPS. These studies include experimental results and comparison with simulations. There were also discussions on future plans to carry out space charge experiments at CERN: “master” experiments (Frank Schmidt). LHC injector upgrade plans were presented by Dr Simone Gillardoni.
  • Space charge in neutron sources: ISIS Ring (RAL, UK), space charge induced emittance evolution simulations and comparison with measurements in SNS (Oak Ridge, USA), Status overview of the ESS (Lund, Sweden) and simulation performance studies for ESSnuSB (ESS to produce neutrinos using a high intensity accumulator)
  • Discussion of the results on high intensity beam tests at the 3GeV Rapid Cycling Synchrotron (RCS) at J-PARC, Japan.
  • Interesting discussions on space charge induced beam loss and mitigation techniques. Interesting studies at the 3GeV Rapid Cycling Synchrotron (RCS). High intensity beam tests.  
  • Space charge in the MEIC Electron ion collider at Jefferson Lab.

Halo formation due to space charge is a relevant topic for proton linacs and was discussed in the talk by Dr Phu Anh Phi Nghiem (CEA, Saclay)). A lot of time was also dedicated to the discussion of beam instabilities and resonances excited by space charge. In order to counteract these effects the resonance compensation techniques are being investigated. Last, not least Dr Javier Resta Lopez, a senior Marie Curie Fellow in the QUASAR Group contribute a talk about “Simulation Studies of the Beam Cooling Process in the ELENA Ring” to the event.
Space Charge is a vast and a very important topic in the field of accelerator physics, and the many high quality talks presented in this workshop confirm it. Chris Prior: “It was encouraging to find a new generation emerging to take the study forward.”