THE SUPERCONDUCTING MAGNET SYSTEM FOR THE LHC

CERN is preparing for the construction of a new high energy accelerator/collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This new facility will mainly consist of a 27 km long double ring of high field superconducting magnets installed in the LEP tunnel, above the LEP machine components. The magnet system comprises nearly 2000 twin-aperture, 8 to 10 T, 10 m long, dipole bending magnets, more than 500, 250 T/m, twin-aperture quadrupoles and a very large number of other superconducting magnetic components. A general description of the system is given together with the main features of the design of the regular lattice magnets. The paper describes also the present state of the magnet R&D programme, which, after the successful phase of short model magnets, is now aimed at the construction of a full prototype 100 m long cell of the LHC machine.