STUDY AND OPERATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION OF A TILTED CROSSING ANGLE IN LHCb

The current crossing angle scheme at LHCb interaction point (horizontal crossing angle and vertical beam separation) prohibits the use of the LHCb dipole positive polarity for 25 ns bunch spacing operation since the beam separation at the first parasitic encounter is very small inducing unwanted beam encounters. To overcome this limitation a different crossing angle scheme was proposed in 2007 by W. Herr and Y. Papaphilippou. The new schema implies a vertical external crossing angle that together with the horizontal internal crossing angle, from the LHCb dipole and its three compensator magnets, defines a new tilted crossing and separation plane providing enough beam separation at the parasitic encounters. This paper summarizes the feasibility study of the new crossing scheme, the implementation in routine operation and analyzes the beam stability during the building up of the tilted crossing plane.