Technical Glossary
The LEIR separates each of the long lead ion pulses received from Linac3 into four shorter packages. It takes about 2.5 seconds for the LEIR to speed up packets, in groups of two, from 4.2 MeV to 72 MeV. The ions then have the energy required to be sent to the Proton Synchrotron (PS). The LHC works with 592 ion packets per beam, so the LEIR takes about 10 minutes to supply enough packets for a full cycle.