Some improvements in the procedure allowed even higher luminosities in the past weeks, up to
150% the design luminosity as peak, and reliably above than 130% at the start of runs. The values between ATLAS and CMS diverge again, this time CMS shows notably higher values, it is unclear if they actually have more collisions. Various planned fixes and upgrades should allow to get even higher luminosities next year.Last week included a "
high pile-up test": As many proton-proton collisions per bunch crossing as possible. They reached 90-95, while the design value is about 25 and the current regular runs have about 35-40 as maximum. The high values per bunch crossing came at the price of just a few bunches with this performance - not suitable for the current operation, 2200 bunches with 40 collisions each are much better than 50 with 90 collisions. The test gives the experiments a better idea how the next years might look like. The HL-LHC upgrade in ~2023-2026 will then lead to 140-200 collisions per bunch crossing.A bit more than one week left for proton-proton collisions, then some machine development, mid November
proton-lead collisions will start (3 weeks). Those collisions are an important control sample to understand the lead-lead collisions better: do they look like a collection of 208 separate nucleon-lead collisions, or which new things do they show? We had a similar run in 2013 already, but at lower energies.
The option to study those collisions is a lucky side-product of the design: Both beams have the same magnetic field strength in the bending magnets. This means the different particle types have the same momentum per charge. Protons have a mass of 1 u per electric charge, while lead has 208 u and 82 charges, a ratio of ~2.53. More mass per momentum means the lead ions are slower: If a bunch of protons collides with a bunch of lead ions at a collision point, and the bunch of protons goes around the ring once, the bunch of lead ions is not there yet, and the collision position would shift all the time. Oops.
Two features make the collisions possible: The LHC has much more energy than any previous collider. More energy means all speeds are extremely close to the speed of light, and speed differences are smaller. The second feature is the decision to have proton-proton collisions (instead of proton-antiproton): the two beams need their magnetic fields in opposite directions, which means they need separate beam pipes. This allows to steer the beams separately better - the lead ions can get the "inside curve", an orbit just a millimeter shorter over the circumference of 27 km - sufficient to keep them synchronized with the protons. At the injection energy, the necessary difference would be 40 cm - way too large to fix this. The LHC
has to accelerate proton and lead to let them collide.Luminosity evolution. The red line is my extrapolation
from July 6th. CMS quotes 37.5/fb, ATLAS 34.6/fb, I plotted both. A huge dataset - I'm looking forward to first results at the end of the year!