Harmonic cavities have been used in storage rings to increase beam lifetime and Landau damping by lengthening the bunch. The need for lifetime increase is particularly great in the present generation of low to medium energy synchrotron light sources where the small transverse beam sizes lead to relatively short lifetimes from large-angle intrabeam (Touschek) scattering. We review the beam dynamics of harmonic radio-frequency systems and discuss optimization of the beam lifetime using passive harmonic cavities.

• Received 22 September 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.4.030701

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