Beam dynamics studies to develop LHC luminosity model

The thesis project aims at studying the different physical processes that are impacting luminosity, one of the key figures of merit of a collider operation. In particular the project focuses on extracting the most relevant parameters for the high-energy part of the model, which is mostly dominated by the beam-beam effect. LHC luminosity is degraded by parasitic collisions that reduce the beam lifetime and the particles stability in the collider. This instability is due to the non-linear effects of one beam electromagnetic field on another in the interaction region. Such parasitic encounters can be as many as 16 per interaction region, piling up to around 180 000 per second. Our goal is to study the evolution of charge density distribution in the beam, by tracking particles through a symplectic integrator that includes the beam-beam effect. In particular we want to obtain data on the halo particles, which are more sensible to instability, to better characterise the beam lifetime and monitor the luminosity evolution.