Dynamic Aperture Study for the NLC Main Damping Rings

A sufficiently large acceptance is critical for the NLC Main Damping Rings (MDR) as the high power carried by the beams demands very high injection efficiency. Chromatic sextupoles and wiggler insertions (needed for rapid damping) are substantial sources of nonlinearities limiting the dynamic aperture. We report on the techniques we are using for analysis of single-particle beam dynamics in the presence of wiggler fields with significant nonlinear components. We demonstrate that our approach gives results in good agreement with experimental data when applied to the BL11 wiggler in SPEAR2, and discuss the present status of studies for the NLC MDR.