Operational experience with automated beam loss analysis in the LHC

Every high-energy beam dump event at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is analysed to assess the performance of the machine protection system and to identify anomalous behaviour. Analysing the loss pattern of nearly 4000 beam loss monitors, which depends on beam parameters and machine settings, can be time-consuming and requires expert knowledge. Therefore, an automated beam loss analysis tool was developed and deployed in operation in November 2023. It uses empirically derived beam loss thresholds that scale with relevant beam parameters to evaluate beam dumps for post-mortem analysis. The paper describes how the beam loss thresholds were derived and optimised and reviews their performance in proton and Pb-ion operation.