Benchmarking of measurement and simulation of transverse rms-emittance growth

Transverse emittance growth along the Alvarez drift tube linac (DTL) section is a major concern with respect to the preservation of beam quality of high current beams at the GSI UNILAC. In order to define measures to reduce this growth, appropriate tools to simulate the beam dynamics are indispensable. This paper is about the benchmarking of three beam dynamics simulation codes, i.e. DYNAMION, PARMILA, and PARTRAN against systematic measurements of beam emittances for different transverse phase advances along the DTL. Special emphasis is put on the modeling of the initial distribution for the simulations. The concept of rms equivalence is expanded from full intensity to fractions of less than 100% of the beam. The experimental setup, data reduction, preparation of the simulations, and the evaluation of the simulations are described. In the experiments and in the simulations, a minimum of the rms-emittance growth was observed at zero current phase advances of about 60°. In general, good agreement was found between simulations and experiment for the mean values of horizontal and vertical emittances at the DTL exit.