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This paper gives an overview about the electronic systems used in the protection system for the LHC superconducting elements. The final design of a variety of electronic devices, where the production has recently been launched, is presented and discussed. Abstract. This paper gives an overview about the electronic systems used in the protection system for the LHC superconducting elements. The final design of a variety of electronic devices, where the production has recently been launched, is presented and discussed.

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The radiation environment encountered at high-energy hadron accelerators strongly differs from the environment relevant for space applications. The mixed-field expected at modern accelerators is composed of charged and neutral hadrons (protons, pions, kaons and neutrons), photons, electrons, positrons and muons, ranging from very low (thermal) energies up to the TeV range. This complex field, which is extensively simulated by Monte Carlo codes (e.g. FLUKA) is due to beam losses in the experimental areas, distributed along the machine (e.g. collimation points) and deriving from the interaction with the residual gas inside the beam pipe. The resulting intensity, energy distribution and proportion of the different particles largely depends on the distance and angle with respect to the interaction point as well as the amount of installed shielding material. Electronics operating in the vicinity of the accelerator will therefore be subject to both cumulative damage from radiation (total ionizing dose, displacement damage) as well as single event effects which can seriously compromise the operation of the machine. This, combined with the extensive use of commercial-off-the-shelf components due to budget, performance and availability reasons, results in the need to carefully characterize the response of the devices and systems to representative radiation conditions.

The protection system for the superconducting elements of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [1] at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), and its associated equipment are presented: quench detectors, cold diodes, quench heaters and related power supplies, extraction resistors and associated current breakers. Features such as radiation resistance, redundancy and required reliability are discussed.