Beam measurement systems for the CERN antiproton decelerator (AD)

The new, low-energy antiproton physics facility at CERN has been successfully commissioned and has been delivering decelerated antiprotons at 100 MeV/c since July 2000. The AD consists of one ring where the 3.5 GeV/c antiprotons produced from a production target are injected, rf manipulated, stochastically cooled, decelerated (with further stages involving additional stochastic and electron cooling and rf manipulation) and extracted at 100 MeV/c. While proton test beams of sufficient intensity could be used for certain procedures in AD commissioning, this was not possible for setting-up and routine operation. Hence, special diagnostics systems had to be developed to obtain the beam and accelerator characteristics using the weak antiproton beams of a few 10⁷ particles at all momenta from 3.5 GeV/c down to 100 MeV/c. These include systems for position measurement, intensity, beam size measurements using transverse aperture limiters and scintillators and Schottky-based tools. This paper gives an overall view of these systems and their usage