Past exam of the classical mechanics course of Part B of the physics course of the University of Oxford / 2016 / 3 / d

For a truly isolated Hamiltonian bunch, Liouville's theorem preserves the fine-grained volume in its full $6N$-dimensional phase space. Hamiltonian manipulation cannot increase its full phase-space density by compressing all canonical position and momentum directions simultaneously. Merely focusing the beam to a smaller transverse spot generally increases angular or momentum divergence; it does not by itself reduce beam emittance.

The distinction between full volume and projected spreads matters. Coupling transverse and longitudinal degrees of freedom can exchange emittance or move spread into other coordinates and correlations, so a projected transverse quantity may decrease without reducing the complete phase volume. That is redistribution, not cooling of every degree of freedom. In linear uncoupled optics, preservation of each transverse canonical area makes the spot-size/divergence tradeoff particularly direct.

Actual cooling allows the beam to exchange energy and entropy with other systems. In electron cooling, a colder comoving electron population receives the protons' random kinetic energy and is subsequently renewed or cooled. In stochastic cooling, a pickup measures deviations and a downstream kicker applies feedback corrections; the electronics, measurement noise and environment belong to the enlarged system. CERN's description identifies exactly this pickup-and-kicker arrangement.^[ref]

Thus these methods relax the idealization that the proton bunch alone is isolated. Including the cooling apparatus does not require the complete closed dynamics to violate Liouville's theorem. For protons, direct radiative damping is much weaker than for electrons, so stochastic or electron cooling is a more relevant practical suggestion than relying on strong synchrotron damping.