Response of colliding beam-beam system to harmonic excitation due to crab-cavity rf phase modulation

During 2008 and 2009 dedicated beam experiments with crab cavities were performed in the KEKB. The goal was to measure the impact of crab-cavity radio frequency (rf) noise on the beam quality. These experiments were performed as a validation of the crab-cavity beam dynamics models in view of the possible use of crab cavities in the upgrade of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). An unexpected strong beam-beam instability was observed during the course of the experiments as a kind of frequency response. Understanding this finding required extensive multiparticle and single particle simulations plus an extra experimental session to consolidate the observations.