In 2017, optics commissioning strategy for low-β Ã operation of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) underwent a major revision. This was prompted by a need to extend the scope of beam-based commissioning at high energy, beyond the exclusively linear realm considered previously, and into the nonlinear regime. It also stemmed from a recognition that, due to operation with crossing angles in the experimental insertions, the linear and nonlinear optics quality were intrinsically linked through potentially significant feed-down at these locations. Following the usual linear optics commissioning therefore, corrections for (normal and skew) sextupole and (normal and skew) octupole errors in the high-luminosity insertions were implemented. For the first time, the LHC now operates at top energy with beam-based corrections for nonlinear dynamics, and for the effect of the crossing scheme on beta-beating and dispersion. The new commissioning procedure has improved the control of various linear and nonlinear characteristics of the LHC, yielding clear operational benefits.
Measurement and correction of focusing errors is of great importance for performance and machine protection of circular accelerators. Furthermore LHC needs to provide equal luminosities to the experiments ATLAS and CMS. High demands are also set on the speed of the optics commissioning, as the foreseen operation with β Ã-leveling on luminosity will require many operational optics. A fast measurement of the β-function around a storage ring is usually done by using the measured phase advance between three consecutive beam position monitors (BPMs). A recent extension of this established technique, called the N-BPM method, was successfully applied for optics measurements at CERN, ALBA, and ESRF. We present here an improved algorithm that uses analytical calculations for both random and systematic errors and takes into account the presence of quadrupole, sextupole, and BPM misalignments, in addition to quadrupolar field errors. This new scheme, called the analytical N-BPM method, is much faster, further improves the measurement accuracy, and is applicable to very pushed beam optics where the existing numerical N-BPM method tends to fail.
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