From jenni@mail.cern.ch Thu May 8 10:00:51 2008 Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 20:19:46 +0200 From: Peter Jenni To: atlas-gen@cern.ch Cc: Marzio Nessi , Peter Jenni Subject: LHC start-up plans Dear Colleagues, With this note we want to inform you about the latest schedule and planning of the LHC start-up, as it was agreed yesterday in a special meeting chaired by the Director-General, bringing together the experiments and the LHC machine. Based on the good progress for the cool down of the LHC sectors, and on the powering tests from two sectors, the following planning was arrived at: 1) End of June: The LHC is expected to be cooled down. The experiments are requested to have their beam pipes baked out. 2) Mid of July: The experimental caverns will be closed after the caverns and tunnel have been patrolled. From then on the controlled access system will be fully activated. 3) End of July: First particles may be injected, and the commissioning with beams and collisions will start. 4) It is expected that it will take about 2 months to have first collisions at 10 TeV. 5) Energy of the 2008 run: Agreed to be 10 TeV. The machine considers this to be a safe setting to optimize up-time of the machine until the winter shut-down (starting likely around end of November). Therefore, simulations can now start for 10 TeV. 6) The winter shut-down will then be used to commissioning and train the magnets up to full current, such that the 2009 run will start at the full 14 TeV design energy. Kind regards, Marzio Nessi and Peter Jenni --