ALFA beam halo

This note serves as a final report about CERN Summer Student Programme 2014 project. The beam halo is an undesired phenomenon for physics analyses on particle accelerators. It surrounds the beam core and constitutes an important part of background for signal measurements on some detectors, eg. in the forward region. In this study, the data from the ALFA detector were used, specifically from the run 191373 ($\beta^*=90\unit{m}$) and the run 213268 ($\beta^*=1\unit{km}$). Using the ROOT framework, a software for beam halo events selection was created and beam halo properties were examined. In the run 213268, excessive beam halo is suspected to be the reason for multiple beam scrapings that occurred. A kinematic reconstruction of beam halo particles is attempted in order to understand beam halo properties in the interaction point. Some further simulations are employed to find constraints for beam halo particles in order to survive in the accelerator for a longer time/many revolutions. This work represents a starting point for a deeper study of beam halo properties and future attempts for its quantitative description.