Performance of the CERN Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) with Xenon beams

In 2017 the CERN Low Energy Ion Ring demonstrated once more the feasibility of injecting, accumulating, cooling and accelerating a new nuclei, $^{129}$Xe${39+}$. The operation of this new ion species started at the beginning of March with the start up of the xenon ion source and the Linac3. Ten weeks later the beam arrived to the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) triggering the start of several weeks of beam commissioning in view of providing the injector complex with Xenon beams for different experiments and a series of machine development experiments in LEIR. Two types of beams were setup, the so called EARLY beam, with a single injection into LEIR from Linac3, and the NOMINAL beam with up to seven injections. 2017 was as well an interesting year for LEIR because several improvements in the control system of the accelerator and in the beam instrumentation were done in view of increasing the machine reliability. This paper summarises the beam commissioning phase and all the improvements carried out during 2017.