Quantitative description and correction of longitudinal drifts in the Fermilab linac

The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) Linac accepts 750 keV H- ions from the front end and accelerates them to 400 MeV for injection into the Booster rapid cycling synchrotron. Day-to-day drifts in the beam longitudinal trajectory during regular operation are of the order of several degrees. They are believed to cause additional losses in both the Linac and the Booster and are addressed by empirically adjusting cavity phases of front end and Linac RF cavities. This work explores a scheme for expressing these drifts in terms of phase shifts in the low-energy part of the Linac. Such a description allows for a simplified visual representation of the drifts, suggests a clear algorithm for their compensation, and provides a tool for estimating efficiency of such compensation.