Landau damping via the harmonic sextupole

Multibunch instabilities of a storage ring electron beam occur due to coherent particle oscillations generated through a bunch to bunch coupling via the impedances, deteriorating the beam quality. One cure for multibunch instabilities is Landau damping, i. e., introducing a spread in the oscillation frequencies among the particles of the individual bunches in order to destroy the coherence of the coupled multibunch oscillation. Measurements at ELETTRA have shown that the harmonic sextupole provides Landau damping capable of suppressing transverse multibunch instabilities. The damping is induced by the nonlinear tune spread with amplitude among the electrons within the individual bunches.