The Magnet Protection Systems section (MP) is responsible for the R&D, design, production, installation, operation and maintenance of hardware using state-of-the-art technologies applied to the protection of superconducting magnets and circuits. The responsibilities of the team include amongst others:

• Support to the LHC operation by assuring the correct function and maintenance of the section’s installed protection systems (energy extraction, quench heater discharge supplies, etc.).
• Contribution to the hardware commissioning of the superconducting magnet circuits of LHC after long shutdowns and year-end technical stops.
• Developing and maintaining expertise in the technologies at use in the protection of superconducting magnets and circuits, in domains such as energy extraction, quench heater discharge supplies and coupling-loss-induced quench units for the present and future accelerators at CERN. This includes the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade, magnet test facilities and several CERN hosted experiments.

The team consists of highly qualified technicians, engineers and applied physicists in the domains of electrical, electro-mechanical and power electronics engineering. The technologies used by the section include power semiconductors and electro-mechanical switches for medium and high-power applications, as well as the use of a variety of controls, measurement techniques and data acquisition systems.