Challenge of benchmarking simulation codes for the LANL beam-halo experiment

We compare macroparticle simulations with beam-profile measurements from a proton beam-halo experiment in a study of beam-halo formation in mismatched beams in a 52-quadrupole periodic-focusing channel. The lack of detailed measurement of the initial distribution is an important issue for being able to make reliable predictions of the halo. We have found earlier that different initial distributions with the same Courant-Snyder parameters and emittances produce similar matched-beam profiles, but different mismatched-beam profiles in the transport system. Also, input distributions with greater population in the tails produce larger rates of emittance growth. We have concluded that using only the known Courant-Snyder parameters and emittances as input parameters is insufficient information for reliable simulations of beam halo formed in mismatched beams. The question is how to obtain the best estimate of the input beam distribution needed for more accurate simulations. In this paper, we investigate a new least squares fitting procedure, which is applied to the simulations and used to determine the injected beam distribution in an attempt to obtain a more accurate description of halo formation than from simulation alone.