Study of the response of low pressure ionization chambers

The Beam Loss Monitoring System (BLM) of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is based on parallel plate Ionization Chambers (IC) with active volume 1.5l and a nitrogen filling gas at 0.1 bar overpressure. At the largest loss locations, the ICs generate signals large enough to saturate the read-out electronics. A reduction of the active volume and filling pressure in the ICs would decrease the amount of charge collected in the electrodes, and so provide a higher saturation limit using the same electronics. This makes Little Ionization Chambers (LIC) with both reduced pressure and small active volume a good candidate for these high radiation areas. In this contribution we present measurements performed with several LIC monitors with reduced active volume and various filling pressures. These detectors were tested under various conditions with different beam setups, with standard LHC ICs used for calibration purposes