LHC Commissioning 2009
The LHC finished its initial commissioning with beam at 18:00 Wednesday 16th December. Since first beam on Friday 20th November:
| Friday November 20th | Injection of both beams - rough RF capture | |
| Saturday November 21st | Beam 1 circulating | - lifetime 10 hours |
| Sunday November 22nd | Beam 2 circulating | - lifetime 3 hours |
| Monday November 23rd | First pilot collisions at 450 GeV First trial ramp (lost 560 GeV - tunes) |
tune feedback on 1 beam |
| Tuesday November 26th | Precycle established Energy matching between SPS & LHC |
|
| Sunday November 29th | Ramp to 1.07 TeV and then 1.18 TeV (00:43 Monday) | Tune PLL commissioned |
| Monday 30th November | Solenoids on | Coupling & orbit compensated |
| Tuesday 1st - Sunday 6th December | Aperture, collimation and beam dump studies continued - protection qualified to a sufficent level at 450 GeV to allow "stable beams" to be declared. | |
| Sunday 6th | 06:55 Stable beams at 450 GeV - 4 on 4 pilot intensities | Initial struggle with vertical tune |
| Tuesday 8th December | Ramp 2 on 2 - lost one beam after 3 minutes - but first collisions in Atlas (21:40) at 1.18 TeV | No logging - suspect loss due tune swing at end of ramp |
| Friday 11th December | (01:30) Stable beam collisions at 450 GeV with high bunch intensities: 4 x 2 10^10 per beam | |
| Monday 14th December | Ramp 2 on 2 to 1.18 TeV - quiet beams - collisons in all four experiments | |
| Monday 14th December | 16 on 16 at 450 GeV - stable beams | |
| Wednesday 16th December | Ramped 4 on 4 to 1.18 TeV - squeezed to 7 m in IR5 - collisions in all four experiments | Step 1: to collision tunes |
| Wednesday 16th December | 18:00 End of run |
A nice record of the 26 days courtesy of CMS's e-commentary team.
Our somewhat fragmented week by week record: