On 10 October, at the very first attempt, a beam travelled round the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) at CERN. LEIR is a central part of the injector chain to supply lead ions to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) from 2008. It will transform long pulses from Linac 3 into short and dense bunches for the LHC.
The following day, after only 1 h of tuning, the beam circulated for about 500 ms per injection. The RF cavities were not yet in operation, so the beam was lost at the end of the injection plateau. The beam used consisted of O4+ ions, which have a longer lifetime than lead ions; work with lead ions will begin at a later stage.
After the installation of a new ion source built by a team from the Low Temperatures Department of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA/DRFMC/SBT) in Grenoble at the beginning of 2005, final work on installing LEIR took place in the summer. Now the aim is to improve understanding of the accelerator’s behaviour and to optimize the ion beam. In addition, the new electron-cooling system, developed and manufactured in collaboration with the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, is to be commissioned. This should reduce the beam dimensions, making it possible to accumulate several pulses from Linac 3.
