Simulation studies of main linac steering in the Next Linear Collider

Abstract

In order to achieve the design luminosity of the Next Linear Collider, the main linac must accelerate trains of bunches from 10 GeV to 500 GeV while preserving vertical normalized emittances on the order of 0.05 mm.mrad. We describe a set of simulation studies, performed using the program LIAR, comparing several algorithms for steering the main linac; the algorithms are compared on the basis of emittance preservation, convergence speed, and sensitivity to BNS phase profile. The effects of an ATL mechanism during the steering procedure are also studied.