Enhancing trappable antiproton populations through deceleration and frictional cooling

CERN currently delivers antiprotons for trapping experiments with the antiproton decelerator (AD), which slows the antiprotons down to about 5 MeV. This energy is currently too high for direct trapping, and thick foils are used to slow down the beam to energies which can be trapped. To allow further deceleration to ∼100keV , CERN is initiating the construction of ELENA, consisting of a ring which will combine rf deceleration and electron cooling capabilities. We describe a simple frictional cooling scheme that can serve to provide significantly improved trapping efficiency, either directly from the AD or first using a standard deceleration mechanism (induction linac or rf quadrupole). This scheme could be implemented in a short time. The device itself is short in length, uses accessible voltages, and at reasonable cost could serve in the interim before ELENA becomes operational, or possibly in lieu of ELENA for some experiments. Simple theory and simulations provide a preliminary assessment of the concept and its strengths and limitations, and highlight important areas for experimental studies, in particular to pin down the level of multiple scattering for low-energy antiprotons. We show that the frictional cooling scheme can provide a similar energy spectrum to that of ELENA, but with higher transverse emittances.