Cleaning Performance of the Collimation System with Xe Beams at the Large Hadron Collider

The LHC heavy-ion program with Pb ions has delivered substantial physics results since the startup of the LHC. There was a Xe run in 2017 in which collimation losses and betatron halo cleaning were assessed. These studies give a unique opportunity for very valuable benchmark of simulation models with measurements, which could also be very important to understand limitations for future runs with Pb and other ion species. In this paper, we present collimation loss maps measured in the first ever operation of the LHC with Xe ions. The measurements are compared with simulations and first conclusions are discussed for possible future operation.