Achievement and Evaluation of the Beam Vacuum Performance of the LHC Long Straight Sections

The bake-out and activation of the TiZrV NEG coatings of the 6 km Long Straight Sections (LSS) of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is in its final step. After the bakeout and the NEG activation, the average ultimate pressure, over more than one hundred vacuum sectors, is below 10^-10 Pa. Therefore, the nominal requirement for the four experimental insertions is fulfilled. The nominal performances are also ensured for all the insertions housing the collimator systems, the RF cavities and the beam dumping systems. The main difficulties encountered during the bake-out and the activation of the NEG coated chambers is presented and discussed. In particular, the acceptance test and the limiting factors of the reached ultimate pressures are addressed. Furthermore, the influence on the ultimate pressures of the beam components (collimators, beam instrumentation, etc.) is discussed. Finally, preliminary results obtained from a NEG vacuum pilot sector installed in the laboratory and dedicated to the evaluation of the NEG performance is presented