Clouds of low energy electrons in the vacuum beam pipes of accelerators of positively charged particle beams present a serious limitation for operation at high currents. Furthermore, it is difficult to probe their density over substantial lengths of the beam pipe. We have developed a novel technique to directly measure the electron cloud density via the phase shift induced in a TE wave transmitted over a section of the accelerator and used it to measure the average electron cloud density over a 50 m section in the positron ring of the PEP-II collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

High brightness electron beam sources such as rf photo-injectors as proposed for SASE FELs must consistently produce the desired beam quality. We report the results of a study in which a combined neural network (NN) and first-principles (FP) model is used to model the transverse phase space of the beam as a function of quadrupole strength, while beam charge, solenoid field, accelerator gradient, and linac voltage and phase are kept constant. The parametric transport matrix between the exit of the linac section and the spectrometer screen constitutes the FP component of the combined model. The NN block provides the parameters of the transport matrix as functions of quad current. Using real data from SLAC Gun Test Facility, we will highlight the significance of the constrained training of the NN block and show that the phase space of the beam is accurately modeled by the combined NN and FP model, while variations of beam matrix parameters with the quad current are correctly captured. We plan to extend the combined model in the future to capture the effects of variations in beam charge, solenoid field, and accelerator voltage and phase.

By analyzing the pulse to pulse intensity fluctuations of the radiation emitted by a charge particle in the incoherent part of the spectrum, it is possible to extract information about the spatial distribution of the beam. At the Advanced Light Source (ALS) of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, we have developed and tested a simple scheme based on this principle that allows for the absolute measurement of the bunch length. A description of the method and the experimental results are presented.

Incoherent electron effects could seriously limit the beam lifetime in proton or ion storage rings, such as LHC, SPS, or RHIC, or blow up the vertical emittance of positron beams, e.g., at the B factories or in linear-collider damping rings. Different approaches to modeling these effects each have their own merits and drawbacks. We describe several simulation codes which simplify the descriptions of the beam-electron interaction and of the accelerator structure in various different ways, and present results for a toy model of the SPS. In addition, we present evidence that for positron beams the interplay of incoherent electron-cloud effects and synchrotron radiation can lead to a significant increase in vertical equilibrium emittance. The magnitude of a few incoherent e{sup +}e{sup -} scattering processes is also estimated. Options for future code development are reviewed.