Explanation

Electron clouds are created when accelerated charged particles disturb stray
electrons already floating in the tube, and bounce or slingshot the electrons into
the wall. These stray electrons can be photo-electrons from synchrotron radiation
or electrons from ionized gas molecules. When an electron hits the wall, the wall
emits more electrons due to secondary emission. These electrons in turn hit another
wall, releasing more and more electrons into the accelerator chamber.

Exacerbating factors
This effect is especially a problem in positron accelerations, where electrons are
attracted and slingshot into the walls at variable incident angles. Negatively
charged electrons liberated from the accelerator walls are attracted to the
positively charged beam, and form a "cloud" around it.

The effect is most pronounced for electrons with around 300eV of kinetic energy -
with a steep drop-off of the effect at less than that energy, and a gradual drop-
off at higher energies, which occurs because electrons "bury" themselves deep
inside the walls of the accelerator tube, making it difficult for secondary
electrons to escape into the tube.

The effect is also more pronounced for higher incidence angles (angles farther from
the normal).

Electron cloud growth can be a grave limitation in bunch currents and total beam
currents if multipacting occurs. Multipacting can occur when the electron cloud
dynamics can achieve a resonance with the bunch spacing of the accelerator beam.
This can cause instabilities along a bunch train and even instabilities within a
single bunch, which are known as head-tail instabilities.

Proposed remedies
A few remedies have been proposed to deal with this, such as putting ridges in the
accelerator tube, adding antechambers to the tube, coating the tube to reduce the
yield of electrons from the surface, or creating an electric field to pull in stray
electrons. At the PEP-II accelerator at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the
vacuum pipe which contains the positron ring has a wire coiled around its entire
length. Running a current through this wire creates a solenoidal magnetic field
which tends to contain the electrons liberated from the beam pipe walls.[citation
needed]

The Large Hadron Collider is very prone to multipacting due to the tight spacing
(25 ns) of its proton bunches. During Run 1 (2010�2013) science operation mainly
used beams with 50 ns spacing, while 25 ns beams were only employed for short tests
in 2011 and 2012.[1] In addition to using a ribbed beam screen designed to minimize
secondary electron emission, the effect can also be reduced by in-situ electron
bombardment. This is done in the LHC by circulating a special non-
science[clarification needed] "scrubbing" beam that is specifically designed to
generate as many electrons as possible within the constraints of heat dissipation
and beam stability. This technique was tested during Run 1, and will be used to
allow operation at 25 ns bunch spacing during Run 2 (2015�2018).

Measurement techniques
There are many different ways of measuring the electron cloud in a vacuum chamber.
Each one gives insight into a different aspect of the electron cloud.

Retarding field analyzers are local grids in the chamber wall that allow some of
the cloud to escape. These electrons can be filtered by an electric field and the
resultant energy spectrum can be measured. Retarding field analyzers can be
installed in drift regions, dipoles, quadrupoles, and wiggler magnets. A limitation
is that retarding field analyzers measure only local cloud, and because they
measure current, there is inherently some time averaging involved. The RFA can also
interact with the measurement it is taking through secondary electrons from the
retarding grid being expelled from the RA and being kicked back into the device by
the beam.

Witness bunch studies measure the tune shift along successive bunches in a train
and in a witness bunch that is placed at varying locations behind the train. Since
tune shift is related to the ring-averaged central cloud density if the tune shift
is known the central cloud density can be calculated. An advantage of witness bunch
studies is the tune shifts can be measured bunch by bunch and so the time evolution
of the cloud can be measured.

The vacuum chamber in an accelerator can be used as a waveguide for radio-frequency

transmission. Transverse-electric waves can be propagated in the chamber. The
electron cloud acts as a plasma and causes a density dependent phase shift in the
RF. The phase shift can be measured as frequency sidebands which can then be
converted back into a plasma density.