The UA9 experimental layout

The UA9 experimental equipment was installed in the CERN-SPS in March '09 with the aim of investigating crystal assisted collimation in coasting mode. Its basic layout comprises silicon bent crystals acting as primary collimators mounted inside two vacuum vessels. A movable 60 cm long block of tungsten located downstream at about 90 degrees phase advance intercepts the deflected beam. Scintillators, Gas Electron Multiplier chambers and other beam loss monitors measure nuclear loss rates induced by the interaction of the beam halo in the crystal. Two Roman pots installed in the path of the deflected particles are equipped with a Medipix detector to reconstruct the transverse distribution of the impinging beam. Finally UA9 takes advantage of an LHC-collimator prototype installed close to the first Roman pot to help in setting the beam conditions and to analyze the efficiency to deflect the beam. This paper describes in details the hardware installed to study the crystal collimation during 2010.