The beam-gas method for luminosity measurement at LHCb

The high resolution of the LHCb vertex detector makes it possible to perform precise measurements of the vertex positions of beam-gas and beam-beam interactions. With these measurements beam parameters such as width and position can be measured. A novel method for determining the absolute luminosity at the LHC using the directly measured beam parameters is presented. The data taken in 2009 is used to illustrate the procedure.