Study of dust-induced beam losses in the cryogenic arcs of the CERN Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This study investigates dust-induced beam losses in the CERN LHC's cryogenic arcs, quantifying collision rates and losses, and validating a simulation model that predicts dust-beam interactions, which is crucial for future high-intensity runs.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of dust-related beam losses, validating a simulation model that accounts for dust attraction by the beam, and offers insights for future high-luminosity collider operations.

Findings

Inelastic collision rates reach nearly 10^{12} per second.

Losses of up to 1.6×10^{8} protons per event observed.

Dust particles are likely negatively charged and attracted by the beam.

Abstract

The interaction of dust particles with the LHC proton beams accounts for a major fraction of irregular beam loss events observed in LHC physics operation. The events cease after a few beam revolutions because of the expulsion of dust particles from the beam once they become ionized in the transverse beam tails. Despite the transient nature of these events, the resulting beam losses can trigger beam aborts or provoke quenches of superconducting magnets. In this paper, we study the characteristics of beam-dust particle interactions in the cryogenic arcs by reconstructing key observables like nuclear collision rates, loss durations and integral losses per event. The study is based on events recorded during 6.5 TeV operation with stored beam intensities of up to $\sim 3\times 10{^{14}}$ protons per beam. We show that inelastic collision rates can reach almost $10^{12}$ collisions per second, resulting in a loss of up to $\sim 1.6\times 10^{8}$ protons per event. We demonstrate that the experimental distributions and their dependence on beam parameters can be described quantitatively by a previously developed simulation model if dust particles are assumed to be attracted by the beam. The latter finding is consistent with recent time profile studies and yields further evidence that dust particles carry a negative charge when entering the beam. We also develop different hypotheses regarding the absence of higher-loss events in the measurements, although such events are theoretically not excluded by the simulation model. The results provide grounds for predicting dust-induced beam losses in presence of higher-intensity beams in future runs of the High-Luminosity LHC.