Anisotropic free-energy limit of halos in high-intensity accelerators

We study halo emittance growth in anisotropic beams and show that the rms emittance growth resulting from mismatch is highly anisotropic, depending on the tune ratio. We find that the free-energy limit calculated by Reiser [J. Appl. Phys. 70, 1919 (1991)] for an axisymmetric 1D halo can be extended to 2D if understood as an upper bound to the rms emittance growth averaged per degree of freedom. The thus-obtained "free-energy limit" of an ideal transport system is compared with the halo rms emittance growth in simulations of the Spallation Neutron Source linac.