First Operational Experience with Embedded Collimator BPMs in the LHC

During Long Shutdown 1, 18 Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collimators were replaced with a new design, in which beam position monitor (BPM) pick-up buttons are embedded in the collimator jaws. The BPMs provide a direct measurement of the beam orbit at the collimators, and therefore can be used to align the collimators more quickly than using the standard technique which relies on feedback from beam losses. Online orbit measurements also mean that margins in the collimation hierarchy placed specifically to cater for unknown orbit drifts can be reduced, therefore increasing the beta-star and luminosity reach of the LHC. In this paper, the first operational results are presented, including a comparison with the standard alignment technique and a fill-to-fill analysis of the measured orbit in different machine modes in the first year of running after the shutdown.