Tuning knobs for the PS-SPS transfer line

Transverse emittance preservation will be an important issue for the LHC injector chain. Minimization of the blow-up at injection by tuning independently the Twiss parameters (α,β), the dispersion D and the dispersion derivative D´ is therefore mandatory. The optics of the transfer line between the PS and SPS machines was modeled and matched using the program package MAD. Tuning knobs were developed using a singular value decomposition (SVD) algorithm. Coupled to the measurement of the Twiss parameters at a given point downstream of the correction elements they provide a fast correction algorithm for the betatron mismatch