Exploring the Potential of the Swiss Light Source

Swiss Light Source (SLS) has been on-line since 2001. Although its performance meets the specifications, it still has a potential to achieve better storage ring beam parameters. We explore two possible improvements. The first one is for the beam lifetime. There are 480 rf buckets while normally 390 bunches are stored. The gap in filing pattern (90 empty buckets) is held to suppress ion instability. After many years of operation, however, the vacuum condition is much better than that of the time when the SLS was turned on. Hence it is possible to shorten the gap. The beam lifetime can then be prolonged due to less bunch current while keeping the net beam current. The study may be also useful to predict possible filling patter in SLS2, which is the SLS upgrade planned. The second one is for the beam emittance. The nominal energy closed orbit coincides with the axes of quadrupole magnets. An off-momentum closed orbit is therefore off-centered through quadrupoles, resulting in a damping partition shift. The beam emittance can be decreased at the expense of a larger energy spread. This was successfully achieved in the ESRF booster. We study whether it is applicable to the SLS storage ring.