Ionization Chambers for the LHC Beam Loss Detection

At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) a beam loss system will be used to prevent and protect superconducting magnets against coil quenches and coil damages. Ionisation chambers will be mounted outside the cryostat to measure the secondary shower particles caused by lost beam particles. Since the stored particle beam intensity is eight orders of magnitude larger than the lowest quench level and the losses should be detected with a relative error of two, the design and the location of the detectors have to be optimised. For that purpose a two-fold simulation was carried out. The longitudinal loss locations of the tertiary halo is investigated by tracking the halo through several magnet elements. These loss distributions are combined with simulations of the particle fluence outside the cryostat, which is induced by lost protons at the vacuum pipe. The base-line ionisation chamber has been tested at the PS Booster in order to determine the detector response at the high end of the dynamic range.