Summary of the Post-Long Shutdown 2 LHC Hardware Commissioning Campaign

In this contribution we provide a summary of the LHC hardware commissioning campaign following the second CERN Long Shutdown (LS2), initially targeting the nominal LHC energy of 7 TeV. A summary of the test procedures and tools used for testing the LHC superconducting circuits is given, together with statistics on the successful test execution. The paper then focuses on the experience and observations during the main dipole training campaign, describing the encountered problems, the related analysis and mitigation measures, ultimately leading to the decision to reduce the energy target to 6.8 TeV. The re-commissioning of two powering sectors, following the identified problems, is discussed in detail. The paper concludes with an outlook to the future hardware commissioning campaigns, discussing the lessons learnt and possible strategies moving forward.
Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand