Laser cooling of relativistic ion beams with broad initial momentum spread

One of the key requirements to using laser cooling at future high energy storage rings is to address the entire and initially broad spectrum of a bunched ion beam with a single cooling laser system.
Recent experiments at ESR have shown that this can indeed be realized by scanning the frequency of a single cw laser over a broad frequency range.
By this technique, each part of the phase space of the ions in the bucket potential can be subjected to the same cooling force, resulting in efficient cooling over the whole bucket acceptance.
Cooling times are thus limited prominently by the duration of the frequency scan and can be in the order of seconds.
In my talk I will present recent results from our experiments at ESR but will also give an outlook on what to do next - and how large-scale beam dynamics simulations can help in making the best use of laser cooling.