CERN, Geneva
The protection of the LHC equipment against beam-induced destruction is given by losses lasting up to three revolutions and longer losses. For the fast losses a passive system consisting of collimators, absorbers and masks is used. For the others an active system consists of beam loss monitors, a beam interlock system and the beam dump. The LHC protection requirements are different to other accelerators. The differences are mainly due to its energy, its stored beam intensity and its dimension. At the LHC top energy the beam intensity is about 3 orders of magnitude above the destruction limit of the superconducting magnet coils and 11 orders above their fast loss quench limit. These extreme conditions require a very reliable damage protection and quench prevention with a high mean time between failures. The numerous amounts of loss locations require an appropriate amount of detectors. In such a fail safe system the false dump probability has to be kept low to keep high operation efficiency. A balance was found between a reliable protection and operational efficiency. The main protection systems and beam instrumentation aspects of the measurement systems will be discussed.
