The Ultimate Beam in the LHC 400 MHz RF System

Recently proposals were made to run LHC with beam currents considerably higher than the so-called ultimate one, since other machines have already operated with even higher beam currents. It seems that it was not generally known that this would require a complete replacement of the RF system, especially the expensive high-power part, probably including the couplers and matched cavities. In this context it was underlined that – apparently also not generally known – already the ultimate current in LHC requires serious upgrades of the (much less expensive) RF system’s low-level part. This caused then doubts on the feasibility of the ultimate current in some people. To clarify the situation, in the present paper we present the facts and try to show the reasons behind in a way understandable also for non-RF specialists.