•Stacking: full
booster batches (~5E12 p) are accelerated to 120 GeV by the Main Injector, and delivered to the pbar target about once every 3 seconds (limited by the rate at which they can be debunched and cooled. It takes 10-16 hours to get enough pbars for a “shot”.
•Shot setup:
various beamline tuning takes place.
Most importantly, pbar transfer lines are tuned with reverse protons.
•Proton Injection: about 7 53 MHz
booster bunches are injected into the M.I., accelerated to 150 GeV and “coalesced”
into a single bunch, which is injected into the Tevatron (x 36).
•Antiproton Injection: part of the
“core” of the accumulator is manipulated to a separate extraction orbit and about 11 53 MHz bunches are extracted to the M.I., where they are accelerated to 150 GeV,
coalesced and injected into the tevatron at 150 GeV.
•Acceleration/collision: The protons and
pbars are accelerated together to 980 GeV over a few minutes. The beam is scraped, and the beta is
reduced (“squeezed”) at the collision regions. Physics begins. During this time, the rest of the accelerator complex is totally free to do other things (primarily
stacking).
•MiniBooNE Operation: While
the M.I. Is ramping, a chain of 8 GeV Booster batches is
switched to the MiniBooNE beamline.
•NUMI Operation: along with the stacking batch, 5 additional batches are loaded into the Main injector. These are
accelerated along with the stacking batch and extracted to the NUMI line after it has been extracted.