Low energy beam dynamics simulations for ELENA optimization

Low energy antiprotons are an essential tool for antimatter research but they are hard to produce and store. The introduction of the new low energy antiproton storage ring (ELENA) at CERN will deliver low energy, high quality antiproton bunches to the antimatter experiment and increase their trapping efficiency by up to 100 times. In order to reduce the energy of the antiparticles without losses in the beam, electron cooling is employed. With the aim to guarantee the best possible beam quality from ELENA and for other next generation ultra-low energy antiproton and ion facilities, it is necessary to deeply understand the characteristics of the cooling process and to realistically include errors and imperfections in the simulation models. For this purpose, different simulation codes, as Betacool and RF-Track, were employed to investigate the effects impacting on beam, establishing realistic models of beam storage and cooling