The CMS Beam Conditions and Radiation Monitoring System

Abstract

Abstract The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is one of the two large, general purpose experiments situated at the LHC at CERN. As with all high energy physics experiments, knowledge of the beam conditions and luminosity is of vital importance. The Beam Conditions and Radiation Monitoring System (BRM) is installed in CMS to protect the detector and to provide feedback to LHC on beam conditions. It is composed of several sub-systems that measure the radiation level close to or inside all sub-detectors, monitor the beam halo conditions with different time resolution, support beam tuning and protect CMS in case of adverse beam conditions by firing a beam abort signal. This paper presents three of the BRM subsystems: the Fast Beam Conditions Monitor (BCM1F), which is designed for fast flux monitoring, measuring with nanosecond time resolution, both the beam halo and collision products; the Beam Scintillator Counters (BSC), that provide hit rates and time information of beam halo and collision products; and the Beam Conditions Monitors (BCM) used as a protection system that can trigger a beam dump when beam losses occur in order to prevent damage to the pixel and tracker detectors. A description of the systems and a characterization on the basis of data collected during LHC operation is presented.