Recent beam experiments at BNL's AGS Booster have enabled us to study in more detail the effects of eddy currents on the lattice structure and our control over the betatron tune. The Booster is capable of operating at ramp rates as high as 9 T/sec. At these ramp rates eddy currents in the vacuum chambers significantly alter the fields and gradients seen by the beam as it is accelerated. The Booster was designed with these effects in mind and to help control the field uniformity and linearity in the Booster Dipoles special vacuum chambers were designed with current windings to negate the affect of the induced eddy currents. In this report results from betatron tune measurements and eddy current simulations will be presented. We will then present results from modeling the accelerator using the results of the magnetic field simulations and compare these to the measurements.

Acceleration of polarized protons in the energy range of 5 to 25 GeV is particularly difficult: the depolarizing resonances are strong enough to cause significant depolarization but full Siberian snakes cause intolerably large orbit excursions and are not feasible in the AGS since straight sections are too short. Recently, two helical partial snakes with double pitch design have been built and installed in the AGS. With careful setup of optics at injection and along the ramp, this combination can eliminate the intrinsic and imperfection depolarizing resonances encountered during acceleration. This paper presents the accelerator setup and preliminary results.