Hector, a fast simulator for the transport of particles in beamlines

TL;DR

Hector is a new, fast simulation tool for particle trajectories in beamlines, incorporating transfer matrices, energy corrections, and aperture effects, validated against Mad-X for LHC beamline analysis.

Contribution

Hector introduces a rapid simulation method for beamline particle transport that accounts for aperture effects and beamline misalignments, improving efficiency over existing tools.

Findings

Hector accurately reproduces LHC beam profiles and trajectories.

Acceptance, irradiation doses, and chromaticity can be efficiently computed.

Misalignments impact proton kinematic reconstruction, as demonstrated.

Abstract

Computing the trajectories of particles in generic beamlines is an important ingredient of experimental particle physics, in particular regarding near-beam detectors. A new tool, Hector, has been built for such calculations, using the transfer matrix approach and energy corrections. The limiting aperture effects are also taken into account. As an illustration, the tool was used to simulate the LHC beamlines, in particular around the high luminosity interaction points (IPs), and validated with results of the Mad-X simulator. The LHC beam profiles, trajectories and beta functions are presented. Assuming certain forward proton detector scenarios around the IP5, acceptance plots, irradiation doses and chromaticity grids are produced. Furthermore, the reconstruction of proton kinematic variables at the IP (energy and angle) is studied as well as the impact of the misalignment of beamline elements.