LHC Beam Diagnostics - the Users Point of View

The LHC started up with beam in November 2009, and within less then on year its luminosity reached 2·1032 cm-2s−1 at 3.5 TeV in October 2010. A few weeks later, in November 2010, lead ion collisions were established within little over 2 days. The fast progress and successes of the LHC commissioning and early operation would not have been possible without the excellent performance of its beam instrumentation. All essential instruments worked from the first day or were commissioned in a very short time, providing rapid diagnostics for the beam parameters. Tune and orbit feedbacks that rely on high quality measurements were used early on to achieve smooth operation with minimal beam losses. This presentation will address the performance of the LHC beam instrumentation, in particular the very large beam position and beam loss monitoring systems, both composed of many thousand channels. Present limitations and future improvements will also be discussed.