DAMPING THE HIGH ORDER MODES IN THE PUMPING CHAMBER OF THE PEP-II LOW ENERGY RING

The Low Energy Ring of the PEP-II B-factory operates with extremely high currents of short positron bunches. Any discontinuity in the vacuum chamber can excite a broad-band spectrum of high order modes (HOM). A temperature rise has been found in the vacuum chamber elements in one junction of straight and arc chambers. The power in the wake fields was high enough to char beyond use the feed-through for the titanium sublimation pump (TSP). This pumping section is 5.5 m long and consists of the beam chamber and an ante-chamber. Electromagnetic fields, excited in the beam chamber penetrate to the ante-chamber and then through the heater feed-through come out. To be sure that these electromagnetic fields are present a small ceramic tile with a high loss tangent was placed near the TSP feedthrough outside of the pumping chamber. A thermocouple that was attached to this tile showed a strong temperature rise. In order to study the spectrum of the fields, a short wire antenna was also placed there. The antenna was connected directly to a spectrum analyzer. Measurements show a wide frequency HOM spectrum with a maximum in the 2-3 GHz region. Based on these measurements a special water cooled HOM absorber was designed and installed in the vacuum chamber. As a result, the HOM power in the section decreased and the temperature rise went down. The power loss in the absorber reaches 1200 W for a positron beam current of 2.4 A. The absorber helped to find the source of HOM. Steering the beam on the vertical collimators upstream of the absorber resulted in the significant HOM power change in the absorber.