Beam-induced heat loads on the LHC arc beam screens with different beam and machine configurations: experiments and comparison against simulations

Abstract

Electron cloud (e-cloud) effects are among the main performance limitations for the operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with 25 ns bunch spacing. A large number of electrons impacting on the beam-screens of the superconducting magnets induces significant heat load, reaching values close to the full cooling capacity available from the cryogenic system. A number of Machine Development (MD) sessions in 2018 was dedicated to characterizing the heat load as a function of beam and machine parameters, investigating in particular its distribution along the ring and its dependence on the filling pattern, bunch population and bunch length. The main results of these measurements have been compared against simulations performed with the PyECLOUD code in order to validate the underlying model