Simulation of the LHC collimation system using MERLIN

The LHC Collimators are designed to remove halo particles such that they do not impinge onto either detectors or other vulnerable regions of the storage ring. However, the very high 7 TeV energy means that their design is critical, as is the modelling of the absorption, scattering and wakefield effects upon the passing bunches. Existing simulations are performed using Sixtrack and K2. We report preliminary results using the MERLIN code, which allows a fuller description of the scattering and wakefield processes, and in principle other physics processes.