99.6% Spin-Flip Efficiency in the Presence of a Strong Siberian Snake

We recently studied the spin-flipping efficiency of an rf-dipole magnet using a 120-MeV horizontally polarized proton beam stored in the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility Cooler Ring, which contained a nearly full Siberian snake. We flipped the spin by ramping the rf dipole’s frequency through an rf-induced depolarizing resonance. By adiabatically turning on the rf dipole, we minimized the beam loss. After optimizing the frequency ramp parameters, we used 100 multiple spin flips to measure a spin-flip efficiency of 99.63±0.05%. This result indicates that spin flipping should be possible in very-high-energy polarized storage rings, where Siberian snakes are certainly needed and only dipole rf-flipper magnets are practical.