Progress with Long-Range Beam-Beam Compensation Studies for High Luminosity LHC

Long-range beam-beam (LRBB) interactions can be a source of emittance growth and beam losses in the LHC during physics and will become even more relevant with the smaller '* and higher bunch intensities foreseen for the High Luminosity LHC upgrade (HL-LHC), in particular if operated without crab cavities. Both beam losses and emittance growth could be mitigated by compensat-ing the non-linear LRBB kick with a correctly placed current carrying wire. Such a compensation scheme is currently being studied in the LHC through a demonstration test using current-bearing wires embedded into col-limator jaws, installed either side of the high luminosity interaction regions. For HL-LHC two options are considered, a current-bearing wire as for the demonstrator, or electron lenses, as the ideal distance between the particle beam and compensating current may be too small to allow the use of solid materials. This paper reports on the ongoing activities for both options, covering the progress of the wire-in-jaw collimators, the foreseen LRBB experiments at the LHC, and first considerations for the design of the electron lenses to ultimately replace material wires for HL-LHC.