Explore the behind-the-scenes efforts at CERN as they gear up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its injector complex for an exciting lead-ion physics run in 2024. Discover the challenges, milestones, and innovative solutions that will push the boundaries of particle physics.
Extending the Peak of Emerald Light
This is a historic achievement, as no collider has ever delivered this amount of integrated luminosity to two experiments in just one year. That feat really demonstrates the superior skill-level of the CERN people in getting as much out of what their accelerator can deliver as possible.
On top of that the LHCb experiment has achieved its 8.5 fb-1 integrated luminosity target in record time. But the team is hardly content. They report that they will continue efforts to boost the size of LHCb’s dataset and support experiments in receiving the highest possible collision rates.
Road To Lead-Ion Reign
And, as the LHC continues to deliver proton-proton collisions to the experiments, the injector chain is already gearing up for the next physics run with lead ions. This intricately balanced series of operations is executed by orchestrating the different elements in the CERN accelerator complex, from Linac3 through to SPS and then on to LHC.
The plan is initially to start the injection of lead ions into the LEIR machine on August 5th. The due date was only 14 days away when a problem with the high-voltage power supply in an Linac3 source-fed 14.5 GHz generator appeared at the last moment, leaving no choice but to delay. With the issue resolved, LEIR received injects of the first lead ions on 19 August and the team reprogrammed the beam commissioning schedule accordingly.
But CERN has been ploughing on, making sure the lead-ion beams were ready to be fed into the SPS on schedule. In the injector schedule, a number of special commissioning blocks have been scheduled to enable the SPS team to carry out part one of the lead-ion beam commissioning. Further steps will include a longer ion cycle, demanding detailed management in order to keep good foreseen efficiency for both proton and ion beam users.
Conclusion
This year-long effort to get ready for the 2024 lead-ion run at the LHC is a tribute to the incredible dedication and ingenuity of your colleagues at CERN. In addition to addressing the technical challenges, everything must be very carefully coordinated to run all parts of the accelerator complex seamlessly together, and the results will enable a rich variety of particle physics discoveries. Novel results from this run are poised to open new windows into the fundamental nature of the universe for our scientific community, as well as serving to complement ongoing runs with proton beams at CERN and beyond!
