The Impact of Longitudinal Drive Beam Jitter on the CLIC Luminosity

In the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) now under study at CERN, the RF power which accelerates the main beam is provided by decelerating a high current drive beam. Errors in the timing and intensity of the drive beam can turn into RF phase and amplitude errors that are coherent along the whole main linac and the resulting error of the final beam energy, in combination with the limited bandwidth of the beam delivery system, can lead to a significant loss of luminosity. We discuss the stability tolerances that must be met by the drive beam to avoid this loss. We also examine one of the most important sources of this jitter, which stems from the combination of RF jitter in the drive beam accelerator and subsequent bunch compression. Finally we give details of a potential feedback system that can reduce the drive beam jitter.