Aperture measurements in the LHC interaction regions

Abstract

The aperture of the LHC interaction regions is crucial for the LHC performance because it determines the smallest achievable β*. The aperture has been measured at top energy for different energies and optics, following optimized procedure to allow safe measurements at high energy. In this paper, the aperture measurements, whose results determined the LHC operational configurations in 2011 and 2012, are presented