Performance of the collimation system during the 2018 lead ion run at the Large Hadron Collider

As part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) heavy-ion research programme, the last month of the 2018 LHC run was dedicated to Pb ion physics. Several heavy-ion runs have been performed since the start-up of the LHC. These runs are challenging for collimation, despite lower intensities, because of the degraded cleaning observed compared to protons. This is due to the differences of the interaction mechanisms in the collimators. Ions experience fragmentation and electromagnetic dissociation that result in a substantial flux of off-rigidity particles that escape the collimation system. In this paper, the collimation system performance and the experience gained during the 2018 Pb ion run are presented. The measured performance is compared with the expectation from the Sixtrack-FLUKA coupling simulations and the agreement discussed.