From: To: Subject: Your_manuscript ZD10084 Brooks Date: 2013 June 3; Monday 18:07 Re: ZD10084 Vertical orbit excursion fixed field alternating gradient accelerators by Stephen Brooks Dear Dr. Brooks, The above manuscript has been reviewed by two of our referees. Comments from the reports appear below. Please advise if this paper should be part of the HIGHBR10 Special Edition. These comments suggest that considerable revision of your paper may be in order. If you resubmit your manuscript, please include a summary of the changes made and a brief response to all recommendations or criticisms. Yours sincerely, Kazuhito Ohmi Associate Editor Physical Review Special Topics Accelerators and Beams Email: prstab@aps.org http://prst-ab.aps.org/ APS Partners with ORCID Link your identifier via https://authors.aps.org/Profile PROBLEMS WITH MANUSCRIPT: In reviewing the figures of your paper, we note that the following changes would be needed in order for your figures to conform to the style of the Physical Review. Please check all figures for the following problems and make appropriate changes in the text of the paper itself wherever needed for consistency. Figure(s) [7,9,12] Do not spell out the names of Greek characters; please use the Greek letter. Figure(s) [7,12] Please modify quantities so that superscripts and subscripts are set as they would appear in text. We do not print computer notation. For example, set powers as superscript numbers; do not use ^2, **2 etc. for squares of quantities. Please adjust the text of the paper accordingly. Figure(s) [7,9,12-18] Please remove background grid and/or shading from your figures. Figure(s) [1,11] The size and font of the letters and numbers appearing in the figure should be uniform (or close to it). Please make the letters and numbers more consistent. Figure(s) [9] Please fix the spelling error(s) in your axis label text. Here preferred spelling: meters. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Report of Referee A -- ZD10084/Brooks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- See Attachment: zd10084_report_1_a.pdf ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Report of Referee B -- ZD10084/Brooks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- REFEREE B ZD10084 This paper by S. Brooks is of highest interest to the accelerator community. I found the author's excellent works of the derivation of VFFAG principle followed by the beam simulation using 3-D magnetic field in the VFFAG magnet. As the author mentioned the last sentence of the section II-C-1, the winding configuration can be a quite big issue. I look forward the results in further studies, how it affects focussing properties. I recommend acceptation. The paper can be published after following minor additions and corrections: 1. The last paragraph in the section II-B, the word 'relativistic', generally, 'ultra relativistic' is used for the case v~c. 2. No explanation for the distance 'a' in Fig. 3 (c). 3. The arrows in Fig. 3 are not clear. 4. What kind of code has been used to calculate 3-D magnetic field? 5. In Fig. 9, what is the definition of 'RMS beta'? 6. No explanations for Fig. 11. 7. What kind of tracking code has been used to make Fig. 1, 10, 11? e.g. Runge-Kutta, symplectic kick and drift, etc. 8. What are the criteria to evaluate dynamic aperture of Fig. 12? e.g. # of turns to track, set physical aperture, etc.