The 2016 Proton-Nucleus Run of the LHC

For five of the LHC experiments the second p-Pb collision run planned in 2016 offered the opportunity to answer a range of important physics questions arising from the surprise discoveries (e.g., flow-like collective phenomena in small systems) made in earlier Pb-Pb, p-Pb and p-p runs. However the diversity of the physics and their respective capabilities led them to request very different operating conditions, in terms of collision energy, luminosity and pile-up. These appeared mutually incompatible within the available one month of operation. Nevertheless, a plan to satisfy most requirements was developed and implemented successfully. It exploited different beam lifetimes at two beam energies of 4 Z TeV and 6.5 Z TeV, a variety of luminosity sharing and bunch filling schemes, and varying beam directions. The outcome of this very complex strategy for repeated re-commissioning and operation of the LHC included the longest ever LHC fill with luminosity levelled for almost 38 h. The peak luminosity achieved exceeded the design value by a factor 7.8 and integrated luminosity substantially exceeded the experiments' requests.