Optimising the present and designing the future: a novel SPS injection system

The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) injection system plays a fundamental role to preserve the quality of injected high-brightness beams for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) physics program and to maintain the maximum storable intensity. The present system is the result of years of upgrades and patches of a system not conceived for such intensities and beam qualities. In this study, we first investigate the effect of emittance growth due to amplitude-dependent tune shifts for erroneously injected beams. As a next step, we propose the design of a completely new injection system for the SPS using multi-level numerical optimisation, including realistic hardware assumptions. Methods and pseudo-algorithms of how this hierarchical optimisation framework can be adapted to other situations for optimal accelerator system design are shown. In addition, we explore the benefits of a numerical optimisation framework for the current SPS injection kicker timing system to minimise residual injection oscillations for maximised delivered beam intensity. We also demonstrate how a simple neural network based upon recorded data can approximate the injection system as a surrogate model, allowing for further studies of different optimisation algorithms even without beam time.