Experimental studies of compensation of beam–beam effects with Tevatron electron lenses

Applying the space-charge forces of a low-energy electron beam can lead to a significant improvement of the beam-particle lifetime limit arising from the beam-beam interaction in a high-energy collider [1]. In this article we present the results of various beam experiments with 'electron lenses', novel instruments developed for the beam-beam compensation at the Tevatron, which collides 980-GeV proton and antiproton beams. We study the dependencies of the particle betatron tunes on the electron beam current, energy and position; we explore the effects of electron-beam imperfections and noises; and we quantify the improvements of the high-energy beam intensity and the collider luminosity lifetime obtained by the action of the Tevatron Electron Lenses.