Beam-beam effects for the PEP-II B Factory

We present a summary of a fairly extensive study of beam-beam issues that arise in the design of PEP-II. Most of these studies are carried out with ''strong-strong'' multiparticle tracking simulations. We focus on: choice of nominal beam-beam parameter, strength of the parasitic collisions, injection issues, performance and tradeoffs with unequal beam-beam parameters. We comment only briefly on beam lifetime. We conclude that: the beams are sufficiently well separated so that the parasitic collisions are effectively weak; that small inequalities in the beam-beam parameters may imply more comfortable performance margins; and that vertical injection with vertical beam separation is more comfortable than horizontal