An improved simulation routine for modelling coherent high-energy proton interactions with bent crystals

The planes in crystalline solids can constrain the directions that charged particles take as they pass through. Physicists can use this "channelling" property of crystals to steer particle beams. In a bent crystal, for example, channelled particles follow the bend and can change their direction. Several studies are on-going at CERN to verify the possibility of using bent crystals as primary collimators in high energy hadron colliders like the LHC. Simulations have been developed to model the coherent interaction with crystalline planes. The goal of this note is to analyze the data collected on extracted beam from the SPS and develop an improved model to simulate the data’s subtleties, in particular the transition between the volume reflection and amorphous interactions of the beam with crystals.