Collimation of partially stripped ion beams in the LHC

In the scope of the Physics Beyond Colliders studies, the Gamma Factory initiative proposes the use of partially stripped ions as a driver of a new type, high intensity photon source in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In 2018, the LHC accelerated and stored partially stripped $^{208}$Pb$^{81+}$ ions for the first time. The collimation system efficiency recorded during this test was found to be prohibitively low. The worst losses were localised in the dispersion suppressor (DS) of the betatron-cleaning insertion. Analytic arguments and simulations show that the large losses are driven by the stripping of the remaining electron from the Pb nucleus by the primary collimators. The rising dispersion in the DS pushes the resulting off-rigidity, fully-stripped ions into the aperture of the superconducting magnets. In this study the measured loss maps are compared against results from simulations. Different mitigation strategies are outlined, including a dispersion suppressor (DS) collimator, crystal collimation or an orbit bump.