Testing Long-Range Beam-Beam Compensation for the LHC Luminosity Upgrade

The performance of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and its minimum crossing angle are limited by the effect of long-range beam-beam collisions. A wire compensators can mitigate part of the long-range effects and may allow for smaller crossing angles, or higher beam intensity. A prototype long-range wire compensator could be installed in the LHC by 2014/15. Since the originally reserved position for such a wire compensator is not available for this first step, we explore other possible options. Our investigations consider various longitudinal and transverse locations, different wire shapes, different optics configurations and several crossing angles between the two colliding beams. Simulations are carried out with the weak-strong code BBtrack. New postprocessing tools are introduced to analyse tune footprints and particle stability. In particular, a new method for the Lyapunov coefficient calculation is implemented. Submitted as "Tesi di laurea" at the University of Milano, 2012.