Studies of Machine Protections for Fast Crab Cavity Failures in the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider

Crab Cavities (CCs) play a main role in the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) project for increasing the luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Their successful installation at KEKB accelerator allowed reaching a peak luminosity of 2.1x10^34/cm^2/s. However, CCs have exhibited abrupt changes of phase and voltage during a time period of the order of a few LHC turns. If similar scenarios take place in the HL-LHC, considering the significant stored energy in the beam, CC failures represent a serious threat in regard to LHC machine protection. This thesis presents and discusses the effect of CC voltage or phase changes on a time interval similar to, or longer than, the one needed to dump the beam. The simulations assume a quasi-stationary state (QSS) distribution, before the failure is produced, in order to assess the particles losses for the HL-LHC. These distributions produce beam losses below the safe operation threshold for Gaussian tails, while, for non-Gaussian tails, they are on the same order as the limit. Additionally, some mitigation strategies are studied for reducing the damage caused by the CC failures.