A New Wall Current Transformer for Accurate Beam Intensity Measurements in the Large Hadron Collider

Michal Krupa () and Marek Gasior ()
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Michal Krupa: Beam Instrumentation Group, Accelerator Systems Department, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), 1211 Geneva, Switzerland
Marek Gasior: Beam Instrumentation Group, Accelerator Systems Department, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 21, 1-21

Abstract: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) stores two high-energy counter-rotating particle beams consisting of multiple bunches of a nanosecond length. Precise knowledge of the number of particles within each bunch, known as the bunch intensity, is crucial for physicists and accelerator operators. From the very beginning of the LHC operation, bunch intensity was measured by four commercial fast beam current transformers (FBCTs) coupling to the beam current. However, the FBCTs exhibited several shortcomings which degraded the measurement accuracy below the required level. A new sensor, the wall current transformer (WCT), has been developed to overcome the FBCT limitations. The WCT consists of eight small radio frequency (RF) current transformers distributed radially around the accelerator’s vacuum chamber. Each transformer couples to a fraction of the image current induced on the vacuum chamber by the passing particle beam. A network of RF combiners sums the outputs of all transformers to produce a single signal which, after integration, is proportional to the bunch intensity. In laboratory tests and during beam measurements, the WCT performance was demonstrated to convincingly exceed that of the FBCT. All originally installed FBCTs were replaced by four WCTs, which have been serving as the LHC reference bunch intensity sensors since 2016.

Keywords: beam instrumentation; beam intensity measurements; current transformers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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