Accelerator physics at LEP

Accelerator physics issues and their influence on performance are presented for the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) storage ring at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. After several years of operation on the Z boson resonance at beam energies around 45 GeV, the beam energy was increased in steps to over 100 GeV. The major power loss to synchrotron radiation and its consequences on the maximum beam energy are discussed. The subjects of luminosity optimization, beam-beam effect, instabilities, detector backgrounds and beam lifetime are addressed. The precise beam energy calibration, which is of particular importance for the determination of standard model parameters, is described.