Recirculating beam-breakup thresholds for polarized higher-order modes with optical coupling

Here we will derive the general theory of the beam-breakup (BBU) instability in recirculating linear accelerators with coupled beam optics and with polarized higher-order dipole modes. The bunches do not have to be at the same radio-frequency phase during each recirculation turn. This is important for the description of energy recovery linacs (ERLs) where beam currents become very large and coupled optics are used on purpose to increase the threshold current. This theory can be used for the analysis of phase errors of recirculated bunches, and of errors in the optical coupling arrangement. It is shown how the threshold current for a given linac can be computed and a remarkable agreement with tracking data is demonstrated. General formulas are then analyzed for several analytically solvable problems: (a) Why can different higher order modes (HOM) in one cavity couple and why can they then not be considered individually, even when their frequencies are separated by much more than the resonance widths of the HOMs? For the Cornell ERL as an example, it is noted that optimum advantage is taken of coupled optics when the cavities are designed with an x-y HOM frequency splitting of above 50 MHz. The simulated threshold current is then far above the design current of this accelerator. To justify that the simulation can represent an actual accelerator, we simulate cavities with 1 to 8 modes and show that using a limited number of modes is reasonable. (b) How does the x-y coupling in the particle optics determine when modes can be considered separately? (c) How much of an increase in threshold current can be obtained by coupled optics and why does the threshold current for polarized modes diminish roughly with the square root of the HOMs’ quality factors. Because of this square root scaling, polarized modes with coupled optics increase the threshold current more effectively for cavities that have rather large HOM quality factors, e.g. those without very elaborate HOM absorbers. (d) How does multiple-turn recirculation interfere with the threshold improvements obtained with a coupled optics? Furthermore, the orbit deviations produced by cavity misalignments are also generalized to coupled optics. It is shown that the BBU instability always occurs before the orbit excursion becomes very large.