• M. Solfaroli Camillocci, G. Arduini, B. Bellesia, J. Coupard, K. Dahlerup-Petersen, M. Koratzinos, M. Pojer, R. Schmidt, A.P. Siemko, H. Thiesen, A. Vergara-Fernández, M. Zanetti, M. Zerlauth
  CERN, Geneva

On 19th September 2008 the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experienced a serious incident, caused by a bad electrical joint, which stopped beam operation just a few days after its beginning. During the following 14 months the damage was repaired, additional protection systems were installed and the measures to avoid a similar incident were taken (i.e. new layer of the Magnet Quench Protection System [nQPS], more efficient He release valves). As a consequence, a large number of powering tests had to be repeated or carried out for the first time. The re-commissioning of the already existing systems as well as the commissioning of the new ones has been carefully studied, then performed taking into account the history of each of the eight LHC sectors (warm-up, left at floating temperature,'). Moreover, a campaign of measurements of the bus-bar splice resistances has been carried out with the nQPS in order to spot out non conformities, thus assessing the risk of the LHC operation for the initial energy level. This paper discusses how the guidelines for the LHC 2009 re-commissioning were defined, providing a general principle to be used for the future re-commissioning.

• H. Thiesen, M.C. Bastos, G. Hudson, Q. King, V. Montabonnet, D. Nisbet, S.T. Page
  CERN, Geneva

The LHC was restarted on the 20th of November 2009 after 14 months of shutdown. The machine is composed of 8 powering sectors, each containing a main dipole circuit and two main quadrupole circuits. Each of these main circuits is entirely independent. To operate the LHC, the magnetic fields in the main magnets must be controlled with unprecedented accuracy. Indeed, the current in each power converter must be controlled with an accuracy of a few ppm (parts per million of nominal current) and the currents must be perfectly synchronised between sectors. To achieve the performance required of the LHC power converters, many challenges have been resolved. These include: measuring the power converter currents with an extreme absolute precision, control of these currents without tracking error or overshoot, perfect synchronisation of the current references sent to the power converters of the 24 main circuits. This paper details how these various problems have been resolved to obtain the performance required. Many experimental results are included, in particular the results of the tracking tests performed with the main circuits of the LHC.