• D. Wollmann, O. Aberle, G. Arnau-Izquierdo, R.W. Assmann, J.-P. Bacher, V. Baglin, G. Bellodi, A. Bertarelli, A.P. Bouzoud, C. Bracco, R. Bruce, M. Brugger, S. Calatroni, F. Caspers, F. Cerutti, R. Chamizo, A. Cherif, E. Chiaveri, P. Chiggiato, A. Dallocchio, R. De Morais Amaral, B. Dehning, M. Donze, A. Ferrari, R. Folch, P. Francon, P. Gander, J.-M. Geisser, A. Grudiev, E.B. Holzer, D. Jacquet, J.B. Jeanneret, J.M. Jimenez, M. Jonker, J.M. Jowett, Y. Kadi, K. Kershaw, L. Lari, J. Lendaro, F. Loprete, R. Losito, M. Magistris, M. Malabaila, A. Marsili, A. Masi, S.J. Mathot, M. Mayer, C.C. Mitifiot, N. Mounet, E. Métral, A. Nordt, R. Perret, S. Perrollaz, C. Rathjen, S. Redaelli, G. Robert-Demolaize, S. Roesler, A. Rossi, B. Salvant, M. Santana-Leitner, I. Sexton, P. Sievers, T. Tardy, M.A. Timmins, E. Tsoulou, E. Veyrunes, H. Vincke, V. Vlachoudis, V. Vuillemin, Th. Weiler, F. Zimmermann
  CERN, Geneva
• I. Baishev, I.A. Kurochkin
  IHEP Protvino, Protvino, Moscow Region
• D. Kaltchev
  TRIUMF, Vancouver

The LHC has two dedicated cleaning insertions: IR3 for momentum cleaning and IR7 for betatron cleaning. The collimation system has been specified and built with tight mechanical tolerances (e.g. jaw flatness ~ 40 μm) and is designed to achieve a high accuracy and reproducibility of the jaw positions. The practically achievable cleaning efficiency of the present Phase-I system depends on the precision of the jaw centering around the beam, the accuracy of the gap size and the jaw parallelism against the beam. The reproducibility and stability of the system is important to avoid the frequent repetition of beam based alignment which is currently a lengthy procedure. Within this paper we describe the method used for the beam based alignment of the LHC collimation system, its achieved accuracy and stability and its performance at 450GeV.

Slides

• V. Baglin, G. Bregliozzi, J.M. Jimenez
  CERN, Geneva

At the start of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 2008-2009 shutdown, all the LHC experimental vacuum chambers were vented to neon atmosphere. They were later pumped down shortly before beam circulation. In parallel, 2.3 km of vacuum beam pipes with NEG coatings were vented to air and re-activated to allow the installation or repair of several components such as roman pots, kickers, collimators, rupture disks and masks and re-activated thereafter. Beside these standard operations, "fast exchanges" of vacuum components and endoscopies inside cryogenic beam vacuum chambers were performed. This paper presents a summary of all the activities held during this period and the achieved vacuum performances.

• V. Baglin, G. Bregliozzi, J.M. Jimenez
  CERN, Geneva
• J. Kamiya
  JAEA/J-PARC, Tokai-Mura, Naka-Gun, Ibaraki-Ken

Pressure increases are observed with the first beams circulating in the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) close to some collimators. This paper describes the vacuum performances of the collimators as measured in the laboratory and also the performances obtained in the machine. Based on these observations, estimations of some operational behavior such as pressure increase and NEG reactivation scenario are given.

• V. Baglin, B. Henrist, B. Jenninger, J.M. Jimenez, E. Mahner, G. Schneider, A. Sinturel, A. Vidal
  CERN, Geneva

During the sector 3-4 incident, the two apertures of the 3 km long cryogenic vacuum sectors of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were brutally vented to helium. A systematic visual inspection of the beam pipe revealed the presence of soot, metallic debris and super insulation debris. After four month of cleaning, the beam vacuum system was recovered. This paper describes the tools and methodologies developed during this period, the achieved performances and discusses possible upgrades.