IBIC2026 - 15th International Beam Instrumentation Conference

Monte Carlo simulations of LHC beam loss ionization detectors

MOP009

31 Aug 2026, 16:40

2h

Ballroom C (Whistler Conference Centre)

Poster Presentation MC02: Beam Loss Monitors and Machine Protection Monday Poster Session 1

Speaker

Belen Salvachua (European Organization for Nuclear Research)

Description

The Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) system of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has the main functionality to actively protect the LHC superconductive magnets against quenches due to energy depositions from beam-induced losses and prevent damage of other sensitive equipment. For this reason, the LHC is presently equipped with more than 3500 ionization chambers 0.5 m-long distributed along the accelerator and downstream selected elements. The standard LHC-type ionization chambers are very sensitive and provide a high dynamic range. However, at certain locations, such as downstream collimators, maximum beam loss specifications are above the saturation limits of the detector. For this reason, the use of a smaller version of the ionization chamber providing lower sensitivity is being investigated. This contribution discusses the differences in the detector response from Monte Carlo simulations between the standard LHC ionization chamber and its smaller version.