Luminosity determination at proton colliders

Abstract Luminosity is a key parameter in any particle collider, and its precise determination has proven particularly challenging at hadron colliders. After introducing the concept of luminosity in its multiple incarnations and offering a brief survey of the pp  and p p ¯  colliders built to date, this article outlines the various methods that have been developed for relative-luminosity monitoring, as well as the complementary approaches considered for establishing an absolute luminosity scale. This is followed by a survey, from both a historical and a technical perspective, of luminosity determination at the ISR, the S p p S, the Tevatron, RHIC and the LHC. For each of these, we first delineate the interplay between the experimental context, the specificities of the accelerator, and the precision targets suggested by the physics program. We then detail how the different methods were applied to specific experimental environments and how successfully they meet the precision goals.