Measurements of temperature on LHC thermal models

Full-scale thermal models for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator cryogenic system have been studied at CERN and at Fermilab. Thermal measurements based on two different models permitted us to evaluate the performance of the LHC dipole cryostats as well as to validate the LHC Interaction Region (IR) inner triplet cooling scheme. The experimental procedures made use of temperature sensors supplied by industry and assembled on specially designed supports. The described thermal models took the advantage of advances in cryogenic thermometry which will be implemented in the future LHC accelerator to meet the strict requirements of the LHC for precision, accuracy, reliability, and ease-of-use. The sensors used in the temperature measurement of the superfluid (He II) systems are the primary focus of this paper, although some aspects of the LHC control system and signal conditioning are also reviewed. (15 refs)