Online luminosity control and steering at the LHC

Abstract

This contribution reviews the novel LHC luminosity control software stack. All luminosity-related manipulations and scans in the LHC interaction points are managed by the LHC luminosity server, which enforces concurrency correctness and transactionality. Operational features include luminosity optimization scans to find the head-on position, luminosity levelling, and the execution of arbitrary scan patterns defined by the LHC experiments in a domain specific language. The LHC luminosity server also provides full built-in simulation capabilities for testing and development without affecting the real hardware. The performance of the software in 2016 and 2017 LHC operation is discussed and plans for further upgrades are presented