Barrier bucket experiment at the AGS

A barrier bucket experiment with two dedicated barrier cavities was performed at the Brookhaven AGS. One of the barrier cavities was a magnetic alloy (MA)–loaded cavity and the other was a ferrite-loaded cavity. They generated a single sine wave with a peak voltage of 40 kV at a repetition rate of 351 kHz. A barrier rf system was established with these cavities and five bunches from the AGS booster were accumulated. A total of 3×10¹³ protons were stored without beam loss, and were successfully rebunched and accelerated. The longitudinal emittance growth was observed during accumulation by the barrier bucket, the blowup factor of which was about 3. The longitudinal mismatch between the rf bucket and the beam bunch was the main reason for the emittance growth. The potential distortions by beam loading of the ferrite cavity and the overshooting voltage of the MA cavity disturbed the smooth debunching.