Studies for Mitigating Flashover of CERN-LHC Dilution Kicker Magnets

The LHC beam dump system is used for extracting beam from the LHC and, as such, is a safety critical system whose proper functionality must be assured. Dilution kicker magnets (MKBs) sweep the extracted beam over the cross-sectional area of a dump block as the energy density would otherwise be too high and damage the block. In 2018, a high voltage flashover occurred in a vertical MKB (MKBV) vacuum tank, during a beam dump, which resulted in non-ideal sweep of the beam over the block. The location of the flashover could not be identified during a subsequent inspection of the magnet. Hence, electrical field simulations have been carried out to identify potentially critical regions, to determine the most probable region of the flashover. One potentially critical region is a rectangular beam pipe (RBP) between the end of the tank and the MKBV magnet, whose purpose is to reduce plasma propagation to the adjacent tank in the event of a flashover. Mitigating measures were studied and are reported in this paper.