Applications of a BPM-based technique for measuring real space distributions in the spallation neutron source ring and transport lines

The SNS accumulator ring and associated transport lines are designed to accumulate and transport up to 1.5e14 ppp to a liquid mercury target for neutron spallation. Since commissioning, a dedicated effort has been put forth to characterize the lattice and beam dynamics at low intensity. Toward this goal, a BPM-based technique for measuring real space beam distributions at low beam intensities was developed [1]. Recently, this technique has been used to diagnose and localize a strong source of coupling in the lattice, to verify and troubleshoot complementary diagnostics devices, and to provide data for code benchmarking. In this paper we present the results of these studies, including the first ORBIT beam dynamics benchmarks of the SNS ring and RTBT.