TUO1A  —  Commissioning, Operations and Performance   (28-Sep-10   09:00—10:20)

Chair: J. Galambos, ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Paper Title Page
TUO1A01 Commissioning of the LHC with Beam 266
 
  • V. Kain
    CERN, Geneva
 
 

After more than a year of repairing and preparing the Large Hadron Collider after a major technical problem, beams were injected again in November 2009. The commissioning plan for the 2009 to 2011 run was ambitious, aiming for centre-of-mass collision energies of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 1 fb-1. To date the LHC has not disappointed its user group or its designers. The first energy ramp to 1.2 TeV took place only 1 1/2 weeks after the start-up. A short technical break at the beginning of 2010 was followed by a series of commissioning highlights, including beams at 3.5 TeV, first collisions at 3.5 TeV, collisions with squeezed beams and injection of nominal bunch intensity. The major challenge for 2010 is to prepare the machine for higher and higher intensities to reach the target integrated luminosity by the end of 2011. This talk will give a short introduction to the LHC and its challenges and then focus mainly on the commissioning strategy, the preparation, the commissioning highlights, the status of the LHC and the plans for the coming months.

 

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TUO1A02 Commissioning and Operation of the LHC Machine Protection System 271
 
  • M. Zerlauth, R. Schmidt, J. Wenninger
    CERN, Geneva
 
 

The energy stored in the nominal LHC beams surpasses previous accelerators by roughly two orders of magnitude. The LHC relies on a complex machine protection system to prevent damage to accelerator components induced by uncontrolled beam loss. Around 20'000 signals feed directly or in-directly into the machine protection system. Major hardware sub-systems involved in machine protection include beam and powering interlock systems, beam loss and beam excursion monitors, collimators and the beam dumping system. Since the LHC startup in December 2009 the machine protection system components have been progressively commissioned with beam. Besides the usual individual component tests, global machine protection tests have been performed by triggering failures with low intensity beams to validate the protection systems. This presentation will outline the major commissioning steps and present the operational experience with beam of the LHC machine protection system.

 

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TUO1A03 Operational Experience at J-PARC 276
 
  • H. Hotchi
    JAEA/J-PARC, Tokai-Mura, Naka-Gun, Ibaraki-Ken
 
 

The J-PARC consists of linac, 3-GeV RCS (Rapid Cycling Synchrotron), 50-GeV MR (Main Ring synchrotron) and three experimental facilities, the MLF (Material and Life science experimental Facility), the hadron experimental facility and the neutrino beam line. The RCS has performed 120 kW beam operation to the MLF since November 2009 and recently the MR has started 50 kW beam delivery to the neutrino beam line. In this paper the recent progress and experience in the course of our beam power ramp-up scenario such as beam loss control and machine activation will be presented.

 

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TUO1A04 Control and Protection Aspects of the Megawatt Proton Accelerator at PSI 281
 
  • A.C. Mezger, M. Seidel
    PSI, Villigen
 
 

At the PSI a high intensity proton accelerator complex is routinely operated with a final energy of 590 MeV and with a beam current of 2.2 mA. In the future the beam current will be increased to 3 mA, then carrying a beam power of 1.8 MW. Operating a facility at such a high beam power needs not only a performing and fast protection mechanism against failures but also protection against activation of the facility. This presents a challenge for the beam diagnostics since a high dynamic range of currents is handled. Furthermore several tools, control loops and procedures which are of utmost importance for minimizing the ever present losses in the facility will be presented together with the machine protection system. A new challenge for our facility is the new ultra cold neutron (UCN) facility, coming into operation this year and requiring the switch over from one beam line to another for a duration of 8 sec with the full beam power. Using a short pilot pulse of a few ms the beam position is measured and the beam centered in preparation of the long pulse. We will show the diagnostics that are involved and how we overcome the constraints given by the machine protection system.

 

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