Test of the LHC DIAMOND Beam Loss Monitors

Chemical Vapour Deposition(CVD) diamond detectors were installed in the collimation area of the CERN LHC to study their feasibility as Fast Beam Loss Monitors in a high-­radiation environment. Four detectors were configured with fast, radiation-­hard pre-amplifiers with a bandwidth of 2GHz. The readout was via an oscilloscope with a bandwidth of 1GHz and a sampling rate of 5 GSPS. Despite the 250m cable run from the detectors to the oscilloscope, particle losses were resolved with a 2ns rise time, a pulse width of 10ns and a time resolution of 615ps. Two modes of operation were applied. For the analysis of unexpected beam aborts, the loss profile was recorded in a 1ms buffer and, for nominal operation, the histogram of the time structure of the losses was recorded in synchronism with the LHC period of 89.2us. Measurements during the LHC start-­up (February to December 2010) are presented. The Diamond Monitors gave an unprecedented insight into the time structure of the beam losses resolving the LHC RF frequency of 400MHz as well as the nominal bunch separation of 25ns. In future, these detectors will be used to study ghost bunches and particles in the 3us abort gap.