Collision rate monitors for LHC

Collision rate monitors are essential in bringing particle beams into collision and optimizing the performances of a collider. In the case of LHC the relative luminosity will be monitored by measuring the flux of small angle neutral particles produced in the collisions. Due to the very different luminosity levels at the four interaction regions (IR) of LHC two different types of monitors have been developed. At the high luminosity IR (ATLAS and CMS) fast ionization chambers will be installed while at the other two (ALICE and LHC-b) solid state polycrystalline Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) detectors will be used. The ionization chambers are being developed by LBNL while the CdTe monitors are being developed by CERN and CEA-LETI.