The Latest from the LHC : Last period of proton running for 2010.

During the recent technical stop, which was brought forward by two weeks to 19-22 October, an aperture restriction in the beam 1 injection channel at Point 2 of the LHC was successfully repaired.
 

The machine was restarted on Friday 22 October, with the priority to re-establish clean injection conditions in the repaired injection channel. This was achieved over the weekend, resulting in a return to physics operation with 312 bunches per beam on Sunday 24 October.

Since then, the number of bunches has been increased to 368, still using the 150ns bunch spacing scheme employed since late September. This has seen peak luminosities in excess of 2 10³² cm^-1 s^-1 and delivered integrated luminosity climbing above 48 pb^-1 in the highest luminosity experiments. Routine operation with 25 MJ stored beam energy was achieved.

For the last week of proton running in 2010, attention will shift to operation with 50ns bunch spacing, the scheme planned for 2011. The aims for this last week are two-fold: to uncover any unexpected problems with the 2011 scheme and, if all goes well, to rapidly increase the number of bunches and continue to deliver integrated luminosity to the experiments.  This will be followed by a short period of machine development with proton beams early next week.

Around 3 November, the 2010 proton run will end and operation with lead ions will start, continuing until early December.

 

 

 

by CERN Bulletin