The technique was invented and applied at the Intersecting Storage Rings,[2] and later the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, by Simon van der Meer,[3] a physicist from the Netherlands.
Before the shutdown of the Tevatron on the 30th of September 2011,[4] Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory used stochastic cooling in its antiproton source.
The equipment was subsequently transferred to Brookhaven National Laboratory, where it was successfully used in a longitudinal cooling system in RHIC,[6] operationally used beginning in 2006.
These individual kicks are applied continuously and over an extended time, the average tendency of the particles to have wayward momenta is reduced.
This can instead be accomplished by stochastic cooling, which aims to slow down individual particles within each bunch using electromagnetic radiation.
To achieve cooling, the position information is fed-back into the particle bunches (using, for example, a fast kicker magnet), producing a negative feedback loop that stabilizes their motion.
The bunches are focused through a small hole between the electrode structure, so that the devices have access to the near-field of the radiation.
The smaller the group of particles which can be detected and adjusted at once (requiring higher bandwidth), the faster the cooling.
As the particles in the storage ring travel at nearly the speed of light, the feedback loop, in general, has to wait until the bunch returns to make the correction.
While stochastic cooling has been very successful, its application is limited to beams with a low number of particles per bunch.