Damping of coherent oscillations

Damping of coherent oscillations by feedback is straightforward in principle. It has been a vital ingredient for the safe operation of accelerators since a long time. The increasing dimensions and beam intensities of the new generation of hadron colliders impose unprecedented demands on the performance of future systems. The arguments leading to the specification of a transverse feedback system for the CERN SPS in its role as LHC injector and the LHC collider itself are developed to illustrate this. The preservation of the transverse emittance is the guiding principle during this exercise keeping in mind the hostile environment which comprises: transverse impedance bent on developing coupled bunch instabilities, injection errors, unwanted transverse excitation, unavoidable tune spreads and noise in the damping loop. (orig.)