At 1.00 a.m. + 17 seconds on Monday, 17 July, the LHC beams were dumped after only 9 minutes in collision due to a radiofrequency interlock caused by an electrical perturbation. Approximately 300 milliseconds after the beams were cleanly dumped, several superconducting magnets around the LHC quenched – i.e. they lost their superconducting state. Among these magnets were the inner triplet magnets located to the left of Point 8 (LHCb), which play a crucial role in focusing the beams for the LHCb experiment.

While this sequence of events may not happen very often during beam operation, it is not exceptional for the LHC, as occasional quenches of some superconducting magnets are to be expected.

In this particular case, the electrical perturbation caused the quench protection system (Q