Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

Simulation of Synchrotron Radiation and Pressure in the HERA Interaction Region

Student: Adam Hutchinson

School: Louisiana State University

Mentored By: Marcy Stutzman

The Jefferson Lab Electron-Ion Collider (JLEIC) has been proposed as an addition to the lab's existing accelerator facility as a vehicle for the exploration of fundamental particles and their interactions. Integral to the design and production of JLEIC will be the ability to accurately model properties of and conditions within the machine. Molflow+ was employed to simulate pressure distribution from outgassing rates and pumping speeds within the HERA interaction region, and SynRad+ was used to profile the absorption of synchrotron radiation power by simulating the elecron beam and determining the production of synchrotron radiation as a function of the machine's optics. The obtained data are shown to closely match the empirical pressure and energy measurements from HERA. This benchmarking study showed that simulations of synchrotron radiation at electron beam energies similar to that proposed for JLEIC matches closely with the observed performance of the HERA accelerator, and that Moflow+/Synrad+ models should be used for modeling the JLEIC interaction region.