Electron Cooling

Electron cooling is a method of reducing the 6 -dimensional phase space volume of a stored ion beam. The technique was invented by Budker and first developed by him and his colleagues at the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk. Further studies of electron cooling were subsequently performed at CERN and Fermilab. At the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility (IUCF) an electron cooling system was designed, built, and commissioned in 1988. This was the highest energy system built to date (270 keV for cooling 500 MeV protons) and the first such system to be used as an instrument for performing nuclear and atomic physics experiments. This dissertation summarizes the design principles; measurements of the longitudinal drag rate (cooling force), equilibrium cooled beam properties and effective longitudinal electron beam temperature. These measurements are compared with theory and with the measured performance of other cooling systems. In addition the feasibility of extending this technology to energies an order of magnitude higher are discussed.