Ion trapping study in eRHIC

The ion trapping effect is an important beam dynamics issue in energy recovery linac (ERL). The ionized residue gas molecules can accumulate at the vicinity of the electron beam path and deteriorate the quality of the electron beam. In this paper, we present calculation results to address this issue in eRHIC and find best beam pattern to eliminate this effect. eRHIC is the future electron ion collider(EIC), which collides 5GeV to 30GeV electron beam from a new electron accelerator with the ion beam from existing RHIC ring. The electron accelerator adopts a multi-pass ERL, which contains 6 passes with 2 linacs per pass. The electron impacted ionization effect needs attention to ensure the quality of the electron beam. The high energy electrons ionize the residue gas in beam pipe. These ions may accumulate and are 'trapped' near the axis of the pipe where the electron beam passes, due to the interaction with the electron beam. The concentration of the ion may produce noticeable space charge field that affects the electron beam and neutralize the electron beam in the linacs. In the paper, we start with cross section of the ionization process and calculate the accumulation time, which are followed by the modeling to determine the criteria of the ion trapping. The ion trapping effect is determined by the longitudinal configuration of the electron bunches. The effect can be reduced or mitigate by some proper electron beam patterns. We will present these patterns with a linearized model. We present the linearized calculation on the ion motion in the cavity of multi-pass ERL and determine the stability of the ion motion from the results. We conclude that the ionized molecules won't accumulated in eRHIC linacs except both 40m ends. Electro-static clearing electrodes should be installed in those regions to remove the ions from accumulation.