Designing and building a collimation system for the high-intensity LHC beam

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will collide proton beams at 14 TeV c.m. with unprecedented stored intensities. The transverse energy density in the beam will be about three orders of magnitude larger than previously handled in the Tevatron or in HERA, if compared at the locations of the betatron collimators. In particular, the population in the beam halo is much above the quench level of the superconducting magnets. Two LHC insertions are dedicated to collimation with the design goals of preventing magnet quenches in regular operation and preventing damage to accelerator components in case of irregular beam loss. We discuss the challenges for designing and building a collimation system that withstands the high power LHC beam and provides the required high cleaning efficiency. Plans for future work are outlined.