Semiautomatic beam-based LHC collimator alignment

Full beam-based alignment of the LHC collimation system was a time-consuming procedure (up to 28 hours) as the collimators were set up manually. A yearly alignment campaign has been sufficient for now, although in the future due to tighter tolerances this may lead to a decrease in the cleaning efficiency if machine parameters such as the beam orbit drift over time. Automating the collimator setup procedure can reduce the beam time for collimator setup and allow for more frequent alignments, therefore reducing the risk of performance degradation. This article describes the design and testing of a semiautomatic algorithm as a first step towards a fully automatic setup procedure. The parameters used to measure the accuracy and performance of the alignment are defined and determined from experimental data. A comparison of these measured parameters at 450 GeV and 3.5 TeV with manual and semiautomatic alignment is provided.