Search

The LHC is an accelerator with unprecedented complexity where the energy stored in magnets and the beams exceeds other accelerators by one-to-two orders of magnitude. To ensure a safe and efficient machine start-up without being plagued by technical problems, a phase of "hardware commissioning" was introduced: a thorough commissioning of technical systems without beam. This activity started in June 2005 with the commissioning of individual systems, followed by operating a full sector, one eighth of the machine; the commissioning is expected to last until spring 2008 when commissioning with beam will start. The LHC architecture allows the commissioning of each of the eight sectors independently from the others, before the installation of other sectors is complete. An important effort went into the definition of the programme and the organization of the coordination in the field, as well as in the preparation of the tools to record and analyze test results. This paper discusses the experience with this approach, presents results from the commissioning of the first LHC sector and gives an outlook for future activities.

The performance of the LHC depends critically on the low-triplets, located on either side of the interaction points. Each triplet consists of four superconducting quadrupole magnets, which must operate reliably at up to 215 T/m, sustain high heat loads and have an excellent field quality. A collaboration between CERN, Fermilab and KEK was set up in 1996 to design and build the triplet systems, and after nine years of joint effort the production will be completed in 2005. We retrace the main events of the project and present the performance of the low-quadrupoles built by KEK and Fermilab and of other elements of the triplet. The assembly of the first triplet at CERN and plans for tunnel installation and commissioning in the LHC are also reported.

A new quench detection and protection system for superconducting accelerator magnets was developed for the Fermilab’s Magnet Test Facility (MTF). This system is based on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) module, and it is made of mostly commercially available, integrated hardware and software components. It provides all the functions of our existing VME-based quench detection and protection system, but in addition the new system is easily scalable to protect multiple magnets powered independently and provides a more powerful user interface and analysis tools. The new system has been used successfully for testing LHC Interaction Region Quadrupoles correctors and High Field Magnet HFDM04. In this paper we describe the system and present results.

Future high energy accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider require accelerator magnets with the highest possible fields. For NbTi conductor magnets, this means operating at superfluid helium temperatures in the range of 1.8-1.9 K. As part of Fermilab's superconducting magnet R&D program, we have built a facility to test magnets in a vertical dewar of superfluid liquid helium. The dewar is designed for magnets up to 4 m length and 620 mm diameter, with a temperature range of 1.8 K to 4.4 K and 1 atmosphere helium. The power system consists of 10 kA and 8.8 kA power supplies operating in parallel, with a bus work and an extraction circuit that can accommodate up a 18 kA excitation current. A description of the facility as well as operational experience from the first magnet tests are presented.

The high gradient quadrupole (HGQ) being developed for the LHC interaction regions by the collaboration of FNAC/LBNL/BNL, relies on the use of quench protection heaters. As part of the HGQ R&D program at Fermilab, Tevatron low-/spl beta/ quadrupoles installed with quench protection heaters were tested in normal and superfluid helium. This paper focuses on heater operation time delay and quench propagation velocity measurements since these are important input parameters for designing the quench protection system of the HGQ.