Pushing the space charge limit: electron lenses in high-intensity synchrotrons?

Several accelerator projects require an increase in the number of particles per bunch, which is constrained by the space charge limit. Above this limit the transverse space charge force in combination with the lattice structure causes beam quality degradation and beam loss. Proposed devices to mitigate this beam loss in ion beams are electron lenses. An electron lens imparts a nonlinear, localized focusing kick to counteract the (global) space-charge forces in the primary beam. This effort is met with many challenges, including a reduced dynamic aperture (DA), resonance crossing, and beam-beam alignment. This contribution provides a detailed study of idealized electron lens use in high-intensity particle accelerators, including a comparison between analytical calculations and pyORBIT particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations.