Monte Carlo studies of the radiation fields in the Linac Coherent Light Source undulators and of the corresponding signals in the Cerenkov beam loss monitors

In 2009 the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Center started free electron laser (FEL) operation. In order to continue to produce the bright and short-pulsed x-ray laser demanded by FEL scientists, this pioneer hard x-ray FEL requires a perfectly tailored magnetic field at the undulators, so that the photons generated at the electron wiggling path interact at the right phase with the electron beam. In such a precise system, small (>0.01%) radiation-induced alterations of the magnetic field in the permanent magnets could affect FEL performance. This paper describes the simulation studies of radiation fields in permanent magnets and the expected signal in the detectors. The transport of particles from the radiation sources (i.e. diagnostic insert) to the undulator magnets and to the beam loss monitors (BLM) was simulated with the intra nuclear cascade codes FLUKA and MARS15. In order to accurately reproduce the optics of LCLS, lattice capabilities and magnetic fields were enabled in FLUKA and betatron oscillations were validated against reference data. All electron events entering the BLMs were printed in data files. The paper also introduces the Radioactive Ion Beam Optimizer (RIBO) Monte Carlo 3-D code, which was used to read from the event files, to compute Cerenkov production and then to simulate the optical coupling of the BLM detectors, accounting for the transmission of light through the quartz.