Formation of a single-bunch beam in the booster synchrotron at SPring-8

In order to fill an radio frequency (rf) bucket with an electron beam in the storage ring at SPring-8, an rf knockout system was installed in the booster synchrotron. With this system, the energy of the electron beam injected from the linac was increased from 1 to 8 GeV. The time width of multi-bunch beams from the linac operated at 2856 MHz rf can be selected as 1 or 40 ns. The beam injected from the linac is distributed in rf buckets of the booster synchrotron operated at 508.58 MHz rf. To fill a single rf bucket with a beam, the rf knockout system is operated at a minimum beam energy of 1 GeV. By using the rf knockout system, the electron beam is effectively kept in a single rf bucket. Then the beam is injected into a targeted rf bucket in the storage ring with a precise timing system. The beam intensity of satellite rf buckets in the storage ring was measured with a photon counting method and determined to be 10−6 less than that of the main rf bucket. In this paper, we describe the rf knockout system installed in the booster synchrotron.