Beam-Wall interaction in the LHC liner

The beam pipe foreseen for the LHC is rather unconventional. To shield the cold bore of the magnets from the synchrotron radiation emitted by protons at 7 TeV, a beam screen (the so called "liner") has been introduced practically along all the machine. The present design of the liner is a compromise among beam stability issues, vacuum requirements, heat load on the cold bore, electron cloud effects and mechanical constraints. Three main potential sources of beam energy loss in the actual LHC liner are addressed, namely the interaction with the pumping holes, the (sawtooth) surface corrugation and the effect of an azimuthally inhomogeneous metallic beam pipe modelling the high resistivity of the welding. The losses are estimated through a detailed electromagnetic analysis (by means of standard theories) seeking for analytical expressions of electromagnetic fields and/or coupling impedance. An analytical (or semi-analytical) approach is considered for each problem, to better understand the relevant parameters to be optimised. Whenever possible, the theoretical results are compared to numerical simulations and/or experimental data, sometimes found in literature and sometimes developed ad hoc. In particular, a prototype has been built and measured to check the theoretical predictions about the image currents distribution on an azimuthally inhomogeneous metallic beam pipe.