PhD Success!

 Congratulations to Sasha Horney on successfully completing her PhD viva!

Prof. Adrian Oeftiger (Examiner), Sasha Horney, and Dr Mike Lamont (Examiner)

My research focused on the benchmarking and correction of non-linear resonance driving terms in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), with applications to the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). This work established forced resonance driving term correction as a routine operational method within the LHC, while also opening pathways towards novel correction techniques that were developed and successfully validated within this work. These methods were further extended beyond the traditional single-particle framework commonly used in optics studies to encompass long-range beam-beam effects, enabling the demonstration of the successful correction of both linear and non-linear effects within this more complex regime. In addition, the research investigated the impact of energy shifts in the HL-LHC, as well as the influence of terrestrial tides on the LHC, ultimately leading to the implementation of mitigation measures designed to minimise their impact on machine optics.

Sasha has accepted a postdoc position at the European Spallation Source which will commence in September. She will be working on a feasibility study into the viability of a system for generating proton pulses in the range of 10-100µs by the addition of an accumulator ring or by any another acceptable method.