Beam Instabilities after Injection to the LHC

Long-lasting phase oscillations have been observed at injection into the LHC since its first start-up with beam. These oscillations, however, were not leading to noticeable losses or blow-up in operation, and were therefore not studied in detail. In 2017, dedicated measurements with high-intensity bunches revealed that oscillations can lead to losses even slightly below the baseline intensity for the high-luminosity upgrade of the LHC. For the first time, high-resolution bunch profile acquisitions were triggered directly at injection and the formation of large-amplitude non-rigid dipole oscillations was observed on a turn-by-turn basis. First simulations can reproduce this instability via bunch filamentation that takes place after injection, depending on the mismatch between the bunch and bucket size in momentum at injection.