LHC begins new phase
16 Nov 2010 by Evoluted New Media
The Large Hadron Collider has successfully recorded lead ion collisions moving scientists ever closer to their goal of understanding conditions in the early Universe.
The Large Hadron Collider has successfully recorded lead ion collisions moving scientists ever closer to their goal of understanding conditions in the early Universe.
Just four days after extracting the final proton beam, the first lead-ion collisions were recorded at 287 TeV per beam, marking the beginning of a second phase of operation.
“The speed of the transition to lead ions is a sign of the maturity of the LHC,” said Rolf Heuer, CERN’s director general, “The machine is running like clockwork after just a few months of routine operation.”
Lead-ion collisions will produce tiny quantities of quark-glucon plasma and will help scientists to uncover conditions in the early Universe and how it evolved into matter today. This will also shed light on the properties of the strong interaction that binds quarks into protons and neutrons.
“Heavy-ion collisions provide a unique micro-laboratory for studying very hot, dense matter,” said Jurgen Schukraft, spokesperson of the ALICE experiment, which is optimised to study these collisions, “We’ll be continuing a journey that began for CERN in 1994, which is certain to provide a new window on the fundamental behaviour of matter and in particular the role of the strong interaction.”
The LHC will run with lead ions until 6th December before a technical stop for maintenance, restarting in February with proton beams. The main goal for 2011 is to collect enough data – one inverse femtobarn – to make significant advance in physics.
The decision to move onto the second phase was made after the collider reached its main objective – a collision rate or luminosity of 1032 per square centimetre per second – in October. Since March, it has validated aspects of the Standard Model of particles and forces at 7TeV, and observed the top quark in proton-proton collisions.
“This shows that the objective we set ourselves for this year was realistic, but tough, and it’s very gratifying to see it achieved in such fine style,” said Heuer, “It’s a testimony to the excellent design of the machine as well as to the hard work that has gone in to making it succeed. It bodes well for our targets for 2011.”
