Development of a non-destructive beam-profile monitor based on scintillating fibre planes and SIPMs

CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is currently the largest particle accelerator in the world. To ensure particle energies at LHC's design values and enable collisions at high energies, the working settings and beam parameters are constantly monitored by the beam instrumentation division. The aim of this thesis is to present a new type of detector to monitor one such beam parameter, the transverse beam profile, and to present the results of an analysis of another beam attribute which reduces the luminosity of collider experiments. Part one of this thesis introduces a detector that uses beam-gas interactions to measure the transverse beam profile. The design of the detector is described in detail and the various components that ensure data quality are introduced. Tests that were conducted to investigate the performance of the detector, like timing and efficiency parameters, are presented as well. The first part is concluded with a summary of the work performed on the detector so far and an outlook of future tasks, use, and applications. Part two introduces the concept of longitudinally stray charges in the LHC, called ghost charges. It is described how those ghost charges occur, why they have an impact on the luminosity of collider experiments, and how they are measured. Ghost charge data for three different beam types (protons at intermediate energy, high energy and lead beams) are presented. The results can be used to correct the measured luminosity values for the three types of beams. A summary of the results concludes the second part of the thesis.