Simulation and Observation of the Long-Time Evolution of the Longitudinal Instability in a Cooler Storage Ring

In the ESR heavy-ion cooler storage ring at GSI the exponential growth and the subsequent saturation phase of the longitudinal instability in space charge dominated ion beams can be monitored with high resolution. Kinetic simulations together with the experimental data lead to a new insight into the effects of space charge and electron cooling on the long-time evolution of the instability. In the simulations we observe the continuous excitation of long-lived collective modes generated by particle trapping in the self-excited potential, which suggest that previous “overshoot” concepts need revision.