Ambient temperature field measuring system for LHC superconducting dipoles

Performs acceptance tests including field measurements of the collared coils assembly of the LHC superconducting dipoles to estimate, at an early production stage, the possible significant deviations from the expected multipole component value of these magnets. A sensitive measuring probe and efficient data acquisition are the consequence of a low magnetizing current necessary to limit the coil heating. This demands a high signal sensitivity and an enhanced signal-to-noise ratio to retrieve the higher multipole component. Moreover, the correlation with the multipole content of the magnets at cryogenic temperature and nominal excitation current need to be identified before the manufacturing process may continue. The field probe of the mole-type is equipped with three radial rotating search coils, an angular encoder and gravity sensor. It has been designed to slide inside the bore of the dipole coils and to measure the local field at fixed positions. The field analysis resulting in terms of multipole components, field direction and field integrals, measured on four 10 m long, twin-aperture LHC dipole prototypes, will be described together with the performance of the measuring method.