The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a proposed electron positron linear collider design aiming to achieve a centre of mass energy of up to 3 TeV. The main accelerating structures in CLIC operate at an X-band frequency of 11.994 GHz with an accelerating gradient of 100 MV/m. The present design requires the beams to collide at a small crossing angle of 10 mrad per line giving a resultant overall crossing angle of 20 mrad. Transverse deflecting cavities, referred to as “Crab cavities”, are installed in the beam delivery system (BDS) of linear collider designs in order to ensure the final luminosity at the interaction point (IP) is comparable to that in a head on collision.

We utilise the beam tracking code PLACET combined with the beam–beam code GUINEA-PIG to calculate the resulting luminosity at the IP. We follow a similar tuning procedure to that used for the design of the ILC crab cavities and anitcrab cavities. However an unexpected loss in luminosity of 10% was observed for the 20 mrad design was observed. It was discovered that the action of the crab cavities can affect the geometric aberrations resulting from the sextupoles used to correct chromatic effects in the beam delivery system. This has direct consequences regarding the design of the present CLIC BDS.