Longitudinal emittance blowup in the large hadron collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) relies on Landau damping for longitudinal stability. To avoid decreasing the stability margin at high energy, the longitudinal emittance must be continuously increased during the acceleration ramp. Longitudinal blowup provides the required emittance growth. The method was implemented through the summer of 2010. Band-limited RF phase-noise is injected in the main accelerating cavities during the whole ramp of about 11 min. Synchrotron frequencies change along the energy ramp, but the digitally created noise tracks the frequency change. The position of the noise-band, relative to the nominal synchrotron frequency, and the bandwidth of the spectrum are set by pre-defined constants, making the diffusion stop at the edges of the demanded distribution. The noise amplitude is controlled by feedback using the measurement of the average bunch length. This algorithm reproducibly achieves the programmed bunch length of about 1.2 ns2, at flat top with low bunch-to-bunch scatter and provides a stable beam for physics coast. The noise can be injected either in the beam phase loop or directly in the cavity voltage set point. These two different technical implementations are presented and their respective advantages analyzed. The performance of the algorithm and its further applications are also presented in this paper.