Beam halo in mismatched proton beams.

Progress was made during the past decade towards a better understanding of halo formation caused by beam mismatch in high-intensity beams. To test these ideas an experiment was carried out at Los Alamos with proton beams in a 52-quadrupole focusing channel. Rms emittances and beam widths were obtained from measured beam profiles for comparison with the maximum emittance growth predictions of a free-energy model and the maximum haloamplitude predictions of a particle-core model. The experimental results are also compared with multiparticle simulations. In this paper we will present the experimental results and discuss the implications with respect to the validity of both the models and the simulations. Keywords: beam halo, emittance growth, beam profiles, simulations, space charge, mismatch