The North Area beams H2, H4, H6, H8, P42, K12 and M2 are produced by a high-intensity primary proton beam, impinging on each of the three primary targets T2, T4 or T6. The ‘useful’ particles are picked up by the beam lines and are transported to the user areas. These beam lines are long (from about 500 to almost 1200 meters) and complex and contain a large number of elements of different natures, such as targets, magnets, collimators, dumps, absorbers, converters, detectors, vacuum pumps and access doors.

Each equipment has its own settings and readings, which depend on the required operational mode, on the beam momentum, on the wanted intensity and particle type, on the state of the access to the areas on the beam line and sometimes even on the settings in neighboring beam lines. Most of these settings can be managed by the users themselves via the ‘Cesar’ application for beam line control. A very succinct description of this software is given in section 2. Detailed instructions concerning the general features of the Cesar application are available in a separate document. In the present document we rather address in a general way the most common tasks and how they are best performed.

Every beam line has been designed with specific main purposes and strong points and therefore the detailed use of the beam lines is different for each of them. The specificities of each beam line are normally described in a specific User Manual for the beam line. Information can of course also be obtained from the SBA beam line expert for the beam in question.