High intensity proton synchrotrons provide beams for several types of facility around the world, including spallation neutron sources and high energy physics experiments. The defining feature of these particle accelerators, that of intense beams, is tightly coupled to what limits the intensity, which is the controlled loss of beam particles.

Many different factors contribute to beam loss. Beam will be lost on injection to a synchrotron and may be lost on extraction or in transfer li...