Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The techniques of normal form analysis, well known in the literature, can be used to provide a straightforward characterization of linear betatron dynamics in a coupled lattice. Here, we consider both the beam distribution and the betatron oscillations in a storage ring. We find that the beta functions for uncoupled motion generalize in a simple way to the coupled case. Defined in the way that we propose, the beta functions remain well behaved (positive and finite) under all circumstances, and have essentially the same physical significance for the beam size and betatron oscillation amplitude as in the uncoupled case. Application of this analysis to the online modeling of the PEP-II rings is also discussed.