Combined ramp and squeeze at the Large Hadron Collider

In the first two years of operation of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the betatron squeeze has been carried out at constant flat-top energy of 3.5 TeV after the completion of the energy ramp. This ensured a maximum flexibility during commissioning because stopping at all intermediate optics for detailed measurements and optimization was possible. In order to improve the efficiency turn-around in the future, combining the ramp and squeeze has been considered. In this paper, the feasibility of this scheme at the LHC is discussed and settings at different beam energies are proposed.