| Electron cooling of charged particle beams is a well-established technique at electron energies of up to 300 keV. However, up to the present time the advance of electron cooling to the MeV-range energies has remained a purely theoretical possibility. The electron cooling project at Fermilab has recently demonstrated the first cooling of 8.9 GeV/c antiprotons in the Recycler ring, and therefore, has proved the validity of the idea of relativistic electron cooling.; The Recycler Electron Cooler (REC) is the key component of the Tevatron Run II luminosity upgrade project. Its performance depends critically on the quality of electron beam. A stable electron beam of 4.3 MeV carrying 0.5 A of DC current is required. The beam suitable for the Recycler Electron Cooler must have an angular spread not exceeding 200 murad. The full-scale prototype of the REC was designed, built and tested at Fermilab in the Wideband laboratory to study the feasibility of attaining the high-quality electron beam.; In this thesis I describe various aspects of development of the Fermilab electron cooling system, and the techniques used to obtain the electron beam suitable for the cooling process. In particular, I emphasize those aspects of the work for which I was principally responsible.; Chapter 1 is an introduction where I describe briefly the theory and the history of electron cooling, and derive the requirements to the quality of electron beam and requirements to the basic parameters of the Recycler Electron Cooler.; Chapter 2 is devoted to the theoretical consideration of the motion of electrons in the cooling section, description of the cooling section and of the measurement of the magnetic fields.; In Chapter 3, I consider different factors that increase the effective electron angle in the cooling section and suggest certain algorithms for the suppression of parasitic angles.; Chapter 4 is devoted to the measurements of the energy of the electron beam.; In the concluding Chapter 5, I review the results of my work, and discuss the first observation of MeV-range electron cooling.; Several important issues that are relevant to the Recycler Electron Cooling but are not included in the main part of the thesis are briefly discussed in appendices.; Finally, I conclude that the electron beam quality required for cooling is attainable. The electron cooling demonstration on July 15, 2005 proved it. Since the first observation of the electron cooling, the Recycler Electron Cooler became a useful tool that is routinely applied to every Tevatron store. The application of electron cooling to the antiprotons in the Recycler has already increased the Tevatron luminosity by 15%. |
