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Performance Study of Little Ionization Chambers at the Large Hadron Collider
Abstract
The main detector type for beam loss monitoring of the LHC is a parallel plate Ionization Chamber (IC). In the locations where the beam losses could saturate the read-out electronics of the ICs, two other monitor types, Little Ionization Chambers (LIC) and Secondary Emission Monitors, have been installed to extend the dynamic range of the ICs. The LICs have the same gas composition and pressure as the ICs, but the active volume is 30 times smaller. This reduction in geometrical acceptance reduces the collected dose and holds the LICs under the saturation limit in high loss events, such as during injection failures. In total there are 108 LICs installed in the LHC. In this document the performance of the LICs and their use in the LHC is discussed.
... With a reduced sensitive volume, they are 30x less sensitive than ICs. Secondary Emission Monitors (SEM) further extend the detection dynamic range, by a factor of 7⋅10 5 , using a 3-plate electrodes and 10 -9 mbar internal pressure [11]. ...
Most of the LHC systems at CERN were updated during the Long Shutdown 2, from December 2018 to July 2022, to prepare the accelerator for High-Luminosity. The Beam Loss Monitoring system is a key part of the LHC's instrumentation for machine protection and beam optimisation by producing continuous and reliable measurements of beam losses along the accelerator. The BLM system update during LS2 aims at providing better gateware portability to future evolutions, improving significantly the data rate in the back-end processing and the software efficiency, and adding remote command capability for the tunnel electronics. This paper first recalls the Run 1 and Run 2 BLM system achievements, then reviews the main changes brought during LS2, before focusing on the commissioning phase of Run 3 and future expectations.
The Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) system of the Large Hadron Collider protects the machine from beam induced damage by measuring the absorbed dose rates of beam losses, and by triggering beam dump if the rates increase above the allowed threshold limits. Although the detection time scales are optimized for multi-turn losses, information on fast losses can be recovered from the loss data. In this paper, methods in using the BLM system in diffraction studies are discussed.
The Beam Loss Monitoring System (BLM) of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is based on parallel plate Ionization Chambers (IC) with active volume 1.5l and a nitrogen filling gas at 0.1 bar overpressure. At the largest loss locations, the ICs generate signals large enough to saturate the read-out electronics. A reduction of the active volume and filling pressure in the ICs would decrease the amount of charge collected in the electrodes, and so provide a higher saturation limit using the same electronics. This makes Little Ionization Chambers (LIC) with both reduced pressure and small active volume a good candidate for these high radiation areas. In this contribution we present measurements performed with several LIC monitors with reduced active volume and various filling pressures. These detectors were tested under various conditions with different beam setups, with standard LHC ICs used for calibration purposes
CERN is planning the renovation and upgrade of the beam loss detection system for the Proton Synchrotron (PS). Improved performance in speed–to be able to monitor beam loss on a bunch-by-bunch basis–and in longterm stability–to reduce or avoid the need for periodic calibration–are aimed for. To select the most suitable technology, different detectors were benchmarked in the machine with respect to the same beam loss. The characteristics of the different detectors, the results of the measurement campaign and their suitability as future monitors for the PS are presented.
The BLM (Beam Loss Monitoring) system has to prevent the superconducting magnets from being quenched and protect the machine components against damages making it one of the most critical elements for the protection of the LHC. The complete system consists of 3600 detectors, placed at various locations around the ring, tunnel electronics, which are responsible for acquiring, digitizing, and transmitting the data, and surface electronics, which receive the data via 2km optical data links, process, analyze, store, and issue warning and abort triggers. At those surface units, named BLMTCs, the backbone on each of them is an FPGA (field programmable gate array) which treats the loss signals collected from 16 detectors. It takes into account the beam energy and keeps 192 running sums giving loss durations of up to the last 84 seconds before it compares them with thresholds uniquely programmable for each detector. In this paper, the BLMTC's design is explored giving emphasis to the strategies followed in combining the data from the integrator and the ADC, and in keeping the running sums updated in a way that gives the best compromise between memory needs, computation, and approximation error.
Geant4 is a toolkit for simulating the passage of particles through matter. It includes a complete range of functionality including tracking, geometry, physics models and hits. The physics processes offered cover a comprehensive range, including electromagnetic, hadronic and optical processes, a large set of long-lived particles, materials and elements, over a wide energy range starting, in some cases, from 250 eV and extending in others to the TeV energy range. It has been designed and constructed to expose the physics models utilised, to handle complex geometries, and to enable its easy adaptation for optimal use in different sets of applications. The toolkit is the result of a worldwide collaboration of physicists and software engineers. It has been created exploiting software engineering and object-oriented technology and implemented in the C++ programming language. It has been used in applications in particle physics, nuclear physics, accelerator design, space engineering and medical physics.
The beam loss monitoring (BLM) system of the LHC is one of the most critical elements for the protection of the LHC. It must prevent the super conducting magnets from quenches and the machine components from damages, caused by beam losses. It helps in the identification of the loss mechanism by measuring the loss pattern. Special detectors will be used for the setup and control of the collimators. Furthermore, it will be an important tool during machine setup and studies. The specification requirements of the BLM system include a very high reliability.
The passive protection devices TDI, TCDD and TCLI are required to prevent damage to the LHC in case of serious injection failures, in particular of the MKI injection kicker. A detailed particle tracking, taking realistic mechanical, positioning, injection, closed orbit and local optical errors into account, has been used to determine the required settings of the absorber elements to guarantee protection against different MKI failure modes. The expected protection level of the combination of TDI with TCLI, with the new TCLI layout, is presented. Conclusions are drawn concerning the expected damage risk level.
The beam loss monitoring (BLM) system is integrated in the active equipment protection system of the LHC. It determines the number of particles lost from the primary hadron beam by measuring the radiation field of the shower particles outside of the vacuum chamber. The LHC BLM system will use ionization chambers as its standard detectors but in the areas where very high dose rates are expected, the secondary emission monitor (SEM) chambers will be additionally employed because of their high linearity, low sensitivity and fast response. The sensitivity of the SEM was modeled in Geant4 via the Photo-Absorption Ionization module together with custom parameterization of the very low energy secondary electron production. The prototypes were calibrated by proton beams. For the calibration of the BLM system the signal response of the ionization chamber is simulated in Geant4 for all relevant particle types and energies (keV to TeV range). The results are validated by comparing the simulations to measurements using protons, neutrons, photons and mixed radiation fields at various energies and intensities.
An unprecedented amount of energy will be stored in the circulating beams of LHC. The loss of even a very small fraction of a beam may induce a quench in the su- perconducting magnets or cause physical damage to machine components. A fast (one turn) loss of 3 . 10 -9 and a constant loss of 3 . 10 -12 times the nominal beam intensity can quench a dipole magnet. A fast loss of 3 . 10 -6 times nominal beam intensity can damage a magnet. The stored energy in the LHC beam is a factor of 200 (or more) higher than in existing hadron machines with superconducting magnets (HERA, TEVATRON, RHIC), while the quench levels of the LHC magnets are a factor of about 5 to 20 lower than the quench levels of these machines. To comply with these requirements the detectors, ionisation chambers and secondary emission monitors are designed very reliable with a large operational range. Several stages of the acquisition chain are doubled and frequent functionality tests are automatically executed. The failure probabilities of single components were identified and optimised. First measurements show the large dynamic range of the system.
Geant4 - a simulation toolkit Geant4 collaboration: S. Agostinelli et al. Geant4 is a toolkit for simulating the passage of particles through matter. It includes a complete range of functionality including tracking, geometry, physics models and hits. The physics processes offered cover a comprehensive range, including electromagnetic, hadronic and optical processes, a large set of long-lived particles, materials and elements, over a wide energy range starting, in some cases, from 250 eV and extending in others to the TeV energy range. It has been designed and constructed to expose the physics models utilised, to handle complex geometries, and to enable its easy adaptation for optimal use in different sets of applications. The toolkit is the result of a worldwide collaborations of physicists and software engineers. It has been created exploiting software engineering and object-oriented technology and implemented in the C++ programming language. It has been used in applications in particle physics, nuclear physics, accelerator design, space engineering and medical physics. Keywords: simulation, particle interactions, geometrical modelling, software engineering, object-oriented technology, distributed software development
GEANT4 is a toolkit for simulating the passage of particles through matter. it includes a complete range of functionality including tracking, geometry, physics models and hits. The physics processes offered cover a comprehensive range, including electromagnetic, hadronic and optical processes, a large set of long-lived particles, materials and elements, over a wide energy range starting, in some cases, from 250 eV and extending in others to the TeV energy range. it has been designed and constructed to expose the physics models utilized, to handle complex geometries, and to enable its easy adaptation for optimal use in different sets of applications. The toolkit is the result of a worldwide collaboration of physicists and software engineers. It has been created exploiting software engineering and object-oriented technology and implemented in the C++ programming language. It has been used in applications in particle physics, nuclear physics, accelerator design, space engineering and medical physics.
The previously reported neBEM solver has been used to solve electrostatic problems having three-dimensional edges and corners in the physical domain. Both rectangular and triangular elements have been used to discretize the geometries under study. In order to maintain very high level of precision, a library of C functions yielding exact values of potential and flux influences due to uniform surface distribution of singularities on flat triangular and rectangular elements has been developed and used. Here we present the exact expressions proposed for computing the influence of uniform singularity distributions on triangular elements and illustrate their accuracy. We then consider several problems of electrostatics containing edges and singularities of various orders including plates and cubes, and L-shaped conductors. We have tried to show that using the approach proposed in the earlier paper on neBEM and its present enhanced (through the inclusion of triangular elements) form, it is possible to obtain accurate estimates of integral features such as the capacitance of a given conductor and detailed ones such as the charge density distribution at the edges/corners without taking resort to any new or special formulation. Results obtained using neBEM have been compared extensively with both existing analytical and numerical results. The comparisons illustrate the accuracy, flexibility and robustness of the new approach quite comprehensively.
Very High Radiation Detector for the LHC BLM System Based on Secondary Electron Emission
- D Kramer
D. Kramer et al., "Very High Radiation Detector for the LHC BLM
System Based on Secondary Electron Emission," IEEE NSS Conf.
Record, 26 Oct. -3 Nov. 2007, pp. 2327-2330.
Garfield -simulation of gaseous detectors
- R Veenhof
R. Veenhof. (2016 October). Garfield -simulation of gaseous detectors
[Online]. Available: garfield.web.cern.ch/garfield/.