Operating the LHC Off-Momentum for p-Pb Collisions

The first high-luminosity p-Pb run at the LHC took place in January-February 2013 at 4 Z TeV energy per beam. The RF frequency difference of proton and Pb is about 60 Hz for equal magnetic rigidities at that energy, which means that beams move to slightly off-momentum, non-central, orbits during physics when frequencies are locked together. The resulting optical perturbations (“beta-beating”) restrict the available aperture and required a special correction. This was also the first operation of the LHC with low beta function in all four experiments and it required a specific collimation set up. Predictions from offline calculations of beta-beating correction are compared with measurements during the optics commissioning and collimator set-up.