Beam energy measurements for an experiment on elastic $e^{\pm }p$ scattering at the VEPP-3 storage ring

A precise comparison of the cross sections for the elastic scattering of electrons and positrons on protons was performed recently at the VEPP-3 storage ring in Novosibirsk, Russia. To provide the proposed accuracy, the energies of the electron and positron beams used during the experiment needed to be carefully maintained. This paper describes a special beam energy measurement system used in this experiment. This system is based on measuring the maximum energy of laser photons backscattered from electron and positron beams. It provides continuous beam energy measurements with a total relative uncertainty of less than $4.4\cdot {10}^{-5}$.