The objective is the design, the development, the manufacture and test of the NbTi quadrupole for the interaction regions of the LHC upgrade for higher luminosity.
A new inner triplet layout has been recently proposed [LHC Project report 1000], which serves as a basis of this proposal. In this proposal, each triplet is composed of four quadrupoles all of the same cross section with an inner bore of 130 mm and with two different magnet lengths: (8 and 9 m). For comparison, the present layout features quadrupoles of 70 mm wide aperture, with two different lengths, two different cross sections and different operating currents. In the new design the operating current will be the same, allowing the triplet to be powered in series. This design allows room for reducing physical bottle-necks occurring in other critical component of the machine (e.g. the collimation aperture).
While the peak field remains essentially unchanged, it is limited by the intrinsic properties of the NbTi, i.e. less than 10 T of peak field, the energy and the forces considerably increase with respect to the present design and reach limits so far unexplored for NbTi quadrupoles. These reasons, as well as the necessity to qualify the procedures and the actual field quality, all demand that at least one short model (one-meter-long), be manufactured and cold tested before proceeding to the construction and test of a full scale prototype. This will be a complete magnet with cryostat and all necessary equipment like corrector magnets and it will be the base for preparing the manufacture of the 16 quadrupoles needed for the 2 high luminosity interaction regions (ATLAS and CMS).