The superconducting magnet system for the LHC

The new facility for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will mainly consist of a 27-km-long double ring of high-field superconducting magnets installed in the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP) tunnel, above the LEP machine components. The magnet system comprises nearly 2000 twin-aperture, 8-10-T, 10-m-long, dipole bending magnets, more than 500 250-T/m, twin-aperture quadrupoles, and a very large number of other superconducting magnetic components. A general description of the system is given together with the main features of the design of the regular lattice magnets. Also described is the present state of the magnet R&D program, which, after the successful phase of short model magnets, is now aimed at the construction of a full prototype 100-m-long cell for the LHC machine.