This weekend successful tests of injection of a beam from the SPS into the LHC were performed. The beam only traveled through a few of the sectors before being dumped, since all sectors of the machine are not yet ready for beam commissioning.
A week or so ago the decision was made to start beam commissioning with the magnets only fully commissioned to 2kA. This means that the machine will be limited to operation at 1.1 TeV/beam this year. The current schedule has commissioning to 2kA finishing November 16, attempts to circulate 450 GeV beams starting November 23. On December 7, the beam energy would start to ramp up to 1.1 TeV. 1.1 TeV/beam collisions would start Dec. 14, with shutdown for Christmas/New Year’s starting Dec. 16. This means that 2009 will not see physics collisions, but will perhaps see collisions at energies marginally higher than that of the Tevatron.
By the end of the year, 2 sectors will be commissioned to 6kA, the magnet current needed to run the machine for physics at 3.5 TeV/beam. The rest of the sectors will be commissioned to 6kA and the energy ramped up to 3.5 TeV/beam starting after the shutdown ends in January.
Update: Some more from the latest schedule. January 7 will be the start of recommissioning after the shutdown, and current plan is to have the machine ready for physics collisions at 3.5 TeV/beam by February 8.
Update: The date to begin beam commissioning again by circulating a beam in the LHC is now set for Friday November 20.
Hi Peter,
do you know what the reason is for this further delay?
Cheers,
Martin
PS Where do you think will the Higgs be found first: Tevatron or LHC?
Martin,
I believe the delay in getting all sectors commissioned to 6kA has to do with the new Quench Protection System.
The Tevatron may rule out a larger range of Higgs masses, but it seems unlikely that, even if the Higgs is there, they’ll have convincing evidence of its existence. That should require the LHC, and at least a couple more years.
This means that 2009 will not see physics collisions, but will perhaps see collisions at energies marginally higher than that of the Tevatron.
Could the LHC uncover new things despite running at the same energy as the Tevatron simply due to higher luminosity?
Coin,
The LHC will only briefly be running at Tevatron energies, during the commissioning process on the way to 3.5 TeV/beam. During this period it will be running at extremely low luminosity, not in any way competitive with the Tevatron.
By the way, I see that the NYT seems to have gotten the news about the plan to run at only 1.1 Tev/beam this year from somewhere…
http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/the-cosmic-countdown-in-geneva-goes-on/
Pingback: Latest from the LHC « Not Even Wrong