Beam-induced heating / bunch length / RF and lessons for 2012

Beam-induced heating has been observed here and there during the 2011 run when the bunch/beam intensity was increased and/or the bunch length was reduced. These observations are first reviewed before mentioning the recent news/work performed during the shutdown. In fact, several possible sources of heating exist and only the RF heating (i.e. coming from the real part of the longitudinal impedance of the machine components) is discussed in some detail in the present paper: 1) comparing the case of a Broad-Band (BB) vs. a Narrow-Band (NB) impedance; 2) discussing the beam spectrum; 3) reminding the usual solutions to avoid/minimize the RF heating; 4) reviewing the different heat transfer mechanisms; 5) mentioning that the synchronous phase shift is a measurement of the power loss and effective impedance. The three current 'hot' topics for the LHC performance, which are the VMTSA, TDI and MKI, are then analyzed in detail and some lessons for 2012 (and after) are finally drawn