Commissioning and first operation of the pCVD diamond ATLAS Beam Conditions Monitor

The main aim of the ATLAS Beam Conditions Monitor is to protect the ATLAS Inner Detector silicon trackers from high radiation doses caused by LHC beam incidents, e.g. magnet failures. The BCM uses in total 16 1x1 cm2 500 μm thick polycrystalline chemical vapor deposition (pCVD) diamond sensors. They are arranged in 8 positions around the ATLAS LHC interaction point. Time difference measurements with sub nanosecond resolution are performed to distinguish between particles from a collision and spray particles from a beam incident. An abundance of the latter leads the BCM to provoke an abort of the LHC beam. A FPGA based readout system with a sampling rate of 2.56 GHz performs the online data analysis and interfaces the results to ATLAS and the beam abort system. The BCM diamond sensors, the detector modules and their readout system are described. Results of the operation with the first LHC beams are reported and results of commissioning and timing measurements (e.g. with cosmic muons) in preparation for first LHC collisions are summarized.