Impact Distribution of the Beam Losses at the LHC Collimators in Case of Magnet Failures

During LHC operation, magnet failures may affect the beam optics leading to proton losses in the collimators. These losses, with about 360MJ of stored energy per beam at nominal collision operation, are potentially dangerous for the accelerator equipment. The LHC Machine Protection Systems ensure that the beam is extracted safely before these losses can produce any damage. As a magnet failure develops, so does the distribution of the lost particles, longitudinally along the ring as well as transversally at each collimator. The transversal impact distributions of lost particles at the most affected collimators and their evolution with time have been studied for representative magnet failures in the LHC. It has been found that the impact distribution at a given collimator can be approximated by an exponential function with time-dependent parameters. The average impact parameter ranges from about 7 to 620 ?m for the cases studied.