Descripción
Sumario:CERN accelerators underwent a period of long shutdown from the end of 2018 to 2020. During this time frame, significant hardware and software upgrades have been put in place to increase the performance of both proton and ion accelerator chains in the High Luminosity LHC era. In the context of the CERN lead ion chain, 2021 has been mainly devoted to restore the injectors’ performance and to successfully prove the slip-stacking technique in SPS. In this paper we summarise the key milestones of the ion beam commissioning and the achieved beam performance for the Linac 3 (including the source), LEIR and PS accelerators, together with an outlook on 2022 operation.