Superconducting Cable and Magnets for the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a high energy, high luminosity particle accelerator under construction at CERN and it will be the largest application of superconductivity. Most of the existing 27 km underground tunnel will be filled with superconducting magnets, mainly 15 m long dipoles and 3 m long quadrupoles. These 1232 dipole and 400 quadrupole magnets as well as many other magnets, are wound with copper stabilized NbTi Rutherford cables and will be operated at 1.9 K by means of pressurized superfluid helium. The operating dipole field is 8.33 T; however the whole system is designed for possible operation up to 9 T. The coils are powered at about 12 kA and about 12 GJ of magnetic energy will be stored in superconducting devices. After a brief review of the main characteristics of the superconductors and of the magnets, the special measures taken to fulfill the mass production with the necessary accuracy are presented. The results on one third of the superconducting cable production and on the first fifty magnets are reported and discussed.