Optimization of the LHC separation bumps including beam-beam effects

The LHC beams will cross each other and experience perturbations as a result of the beam-beam effect at the interaction points, which can result in emittance growth and halo creation. The beam-beam force is approximately linear for small offsets and highly non-linear for larger offsets with peaks in growth close to 0.3 and 1.5 σ separation. We present a study of the process of going into collisions in the LHC and use simulations to investigate on possible emittance blow-up. We analyze how the crossing scheme can be optimized to minimize the collapsing time of the separation bumps for given hardware constraints.