The longitudinal compression of high-intensity, space-charge-dominated proton bunches is a critical requirement for future proton-driven muon colliders. We propose a proton bunch compression experiment at the Integrable Optics Test Accelerator (IOTA) storage ring at Fermilab to investigate optimal radio-frequency (RF) cavity parameters and lattice configurations. IOTA is a compact, fixed-energy storage ring dedicated to beam physics Research and Development and capable of circulating a 2.5 MeV proton beam under extreme space-charge conditions. Using the ImpactX code with its 3D space-charge solver, simulations indicate that the bunch length can be rapidly reduced by at least a factor of two without appreciable degradation of transverse beam quality--even in the strong space-charge regime. However, longitudinal defocusing due to the space-charge remains a significant challenge in short-pulsed intense proton bunches, and the optimization of compression under these conditions is discussed.
@article{arxiv.2512.03002,
title = {IOTA Experiment for Proton Pulse Compression at Extreme Space-Charge},
author = {Benjamin Simons and Nilanjan Banerjee and Jeffrey Eldred and Vladimir Shiltsev},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.03002},
year = {2025}
}