LHC optics measurement with proton tracks detected by the Roman pots of the TOTEM experiment

Precise knowledge of the beam optics at the LHC is crucial to fulfill the physics goals of the TOTEM experiment, where the kinematics of the scattered protons is reconstructed with near-beam telescopes—so-called Roman pots (RP). Before being detected, the protons' trajectories are influenced by the magnetic fields of the accelerator lattice. Thus precise understanding of the proton transport is of key importance for the experiment. A novel method of optics evaluation is proposed which exploits kinematical distributions of elastically scattered protons observed in the RPs. Theoretical predictions, as well as Monte Carlo studies, show that the residual uncertainty of the optics estimation method is smaller than 2.5. (paper)