LHC Beam Loss Monitors

At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) a beam loss system will be installed for a continuous surveillance of particle losses. These beam particles deposit their energy in the super-conducting coils leading to temperature increase, possible magnet quenches and damages. Detailed simulations have shown that a set of six detectors outside the cryostats of the quadrupole magnets in the regular arc cells are needed to completely diagnose the expected beam losses and hence protect the magnets. To characterize the quench levels different loss rates are identified. In order to cover all possible quench scenarios the dynamic range of the beam loss monitors has to be matched to the simulated loss rates. For that purpose different detector systems (PIN-diodes and ionization chambers) are compared.