COMMISSIONING AND FIRST OPERATION OF THE LOW-BETA TRIPLETS AND THEIR ELECTRICAL FEED BOXES AT THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER.

The insertion regions located around the four interaction points of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are mainly composed of the low-β triplets, the separation dipoles and their respective electrical feed-boxes (DFBX). The low-β triplets are Nb-Ti superconductor quadrupole magnets, which operate at 215 T/m in superfluid helium at a temperature of 1.9 K. The commissioning and the first operation of these components have been performed. The thermo-mechanical behavior of the low-βtriplets and DFBX were studied. Cooling and control systems were tuned to optimize the cryogenic operation of the insertion regions. Hardware commissioning also permitted to test the system response. This paper summarizes the performance results and the lessons learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]