Operational experience with circulating beam

Following various injection tests, the full LHC beam commissioning started on September 10th. Within three days of beam operation, we established stable and captured circulating beam 2 and achieved circulating beam 1 for many turns. This was made possible by a thorough preparations of all the required accelerator systems, beam instrumentation and control software, which all achieved a remarkable performance. First beam measurements of the linear machine optics were commissioned and showed that the machine optics is well under control. The operational experience with circulating beam, the performance of the various systems and the first measurement results are reviewed. The commissioning procedures for the various systems are presented and lessons learnt for the 2009 operation are discussed.