Wednesday 04 June 2008

Speaker: Dr. Emmanuel Tsesmelis   (CERN)

Title: Commissioning the LHC Accelerator and its Physics Programme

Abstract: The LHC is an accelerator with unprecedented complexity where the energy stored in
the magnets and in the beams exceeds that of other accelerators by one-to-two orders of magnitude.
To ensure a safe and efficient machine start-up, and in order to mitigate any technical problems,
a phase of so-called “hardware commissioning” has been introduced during which a thorough
commissioning of technical systems without beam is undertaken. This paper discusses the
experience with this approach, presents results from the commissioning of the first LHC
sectors and provides an outlook for future activities.

The strategy for a staged commissioning period with beam, that is to follow the “hardware
commissioning” phase, is also presented. Typical accelerator parameters and associated
performance levels are given for each stage. Dedicated runs with heavy ions and protons are
discussed, and a typical LHC accelerator operation schedule is shown.

All experiments will have installed initial detectors and will be ready for commissioning
with beam at the start of LHC operation in 2008. The physics programme is expected to be
rich even at the projected initial luminosities. This talk also presents the requirements
and expectations of the experiments for the accelerator start-up with beam and early
collisions, the heavy-ion runs and the special proton runs, initial conditions that may be
used subsequently to set priorities in order to exploit optimally the first LHC beams for
physics.