Describes the technology and engineering of the Large Hadron collider (LHC), one of the greatest scientific marvels of this young 21st century. This book traces the feat of its construction, written by the head scientists involved, placed into the context of the scientific goals and principles.
"The past 100 years of accelerator-based research have led the field from first insights into the structure of atoms to the development and confirmation of the Standard Model of physics. Accelerators have been a key tool in developing our understanding of the elementary particles and the forces that govern their interactions. This book describes the past 100 years of accelerator development with a special focus on the technological advancements in the field, the connection of the various accelerator projects to key developments and discoveries in the Standard Model, how accelerator technologies open the door to other applications in medicine and industry, and finally presents an outlook of future accelerator projects for the coming decades."--Provided by publisher.
Understanding of protons and neutrons, or "nucleons"â€"the building blocks of atomic nucleiâ€"has advanced dramatically, both theoretically and experimentally, in the past half century. A central goal of modern nuclear physics is to understand the structure of the proton and neutron directly from the dynamics of their quarks and gluons governed by the theory of their interactions, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and how nuclear interactions between protons and neutrons emerge from these dynamics. With deeper understanding of the quark-gluon structure of matter, scientists are poised to reach a deeper picture of these building blocks, and atomic nuclei themselves, as collective many-body systems with new emergent behavior. The development of a U.S. domestic electron-ion collider (EIC) facility has the potential to answer questions that are central to completing an understanding of atoms and integral to the agenda of nuclear physics today. This study assesses the merits and significance of the science that could be addressed by an EIC, and its importance to nuclear physics in particular and to the physical sciences in general. It evaluates the significance of the science that would be enabled by the construction of an EIC, its benefits to U.S. leadership in nuclear physics, and the benefits to other fields of science of a U.S.-based EIC.
This book has been designed to honor Lev Nikolaevich Lipatov, as a person and as one of the leading scientists in theoretical high energy physics.The book begins with three articles on Lev as a person, written endearingly by family members, a very close friend and Physics professor, Eugene Levin, and another outstanding scientist, Alfred Mueller. The book further collects 18 articles by several scientists who closely knew and/or collaborated with Lev.With an overarching range over various subfields, the book summarizes parts of Lev's achievements, presents new results which are based upon Lev's work, and paints an outlook on possible future developments. Lev's theoretical work has had an influential impact on phenomenology and experimental high energy physics; befittingly, this collection also includes several articles on these experimental aspects.
The highest-energy particle accelerator ever built, the Large Hadron Collider runs under the border between France and Switzerland. It leapt into action on September 10, 2008, amid unprecedented global press coverage and widespread fears that its energy would create tiny black holes that could destroy the earth. By smashing together particles smaller than atoms, the LHC recreates the conditions hypothesized to have existed just moments after the big bang. Physicists expect it to aid our understanding of how the universe came into being and to show us much about the standard model of particle physics—even possibly proving the existence of the mysterious Higgs boson. In exploring what the collider does and what it might find, Don Lincoln explains what the LHC is likely to teach us about particle physics, including uncovering the nature of dark matter, finding micro black holes and supersymmetric particles, identifying extra dimensions, and revealing the origin of mass in the universe. Thousands of physicists from around the globe will have access to the LHC, none of whom really knows what outcomes will be produced by the $7.7 billion project. Whatever it reveals, the results arising from the Large Hadron Collider will profoundly alter our understanding of the cosmos and the atom and stimulate amateur and professional scientists for years to come.
An insider's history of the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider: why it was built, how it works, and the importance of what it has revealed. Since 2008 scientists have conducted experiments in a hyperenergized, 17-mile supercollider beneath the border of France and Switzerland. The Large Hadron Collider (or what scientists call "the LHC") is one of the wonders of the modern world—a highly sophisticated scientific instrument designed to re-create in miniature the conditions of the universe as they existed in the microseconds following the big bang. Among many notable LHC discoveries, one led to the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for revealing evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle. Picking up where he left off in The Quantum Frontier, physicist Don Lincoln shares an insider's account of the LHC's operational history and gives readers everything they need to become well informed on this marvel of technology. Writing about the LHC's early days, Lincoln offers keen insight into an accident that derailed the operation nine days after the collider's 2008 debut. A faulty solder joint started a chain reaction that caused a massive explosion, damaged 50 superconducting magnets, and vaporized large sections of the conductor. The crippled LHC lay dormant for over a year, while technical teams repaired the damage. Lincoln devotes an entire chapter to the Higgs boson and Higgs field, using several extended analogies to help explain the importance of these concepts to particle physics. In the final chapter, he describes what the discovery of the Higgs boson tells us about our current understanding of basic physics and how the discovery now keeps scientists awake over a nagging inconsistency in their favorite theory. As accessible as it is fascinating, The Large Hadron Collider reveals the inner workings of this masterful achievement of technology, along with the mind-blowing discoveries that will keep it at the center of the scientific frontier for the foreseeable future.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the highest energy collider ever built. It resides near Geneva in a tunnel 3.8m wide, with a circumference of 26.7km, which was excavated in 1983-1988 to initially house the electron-positron collider LEP. The LHC was approved in 1995, and it took until 2010 for reliable operation. By now, a larger set of larger integrated luminosities have been accumulated for physics analyses in the four collider experiments: ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ALICE.The LHC operates with an extended cryogenic plant, using a multi-stage injection system comprising the PS and SPS accelerators (still in use for particle physics experiments at lower energies). The beams are guided by 1232 superconducting high field dipole magnets.Intense works are underway in preparation of the High Luminosity LHC, aimed at upgrading the LHC and detectors for collecting ten times more luminosity, and extending the collider life to the early 2040's. So far, the (HL-)LHC project represents a cumulation of around one hundred thousand person-years of innovative work by technicians, engineers, and physicists from all over the world; probably the largest scientific effort ever in the history of humanity. The book is driven by the realisation of the unique value of this accelerator complex and by the recognition of the status of high energy physics, described by a Standard Model — which still leaves too many questions unanswered to be the appropriate theory of elementary particles and their interactions.Following the Introduction are: three chapters which focus on the initial decade of operation, leading to the celebrated discovery of the Higgs Boson, on the techniques and physics of the luminosity upgrade, and finally on major options - of using the LHC in a concurrent, power economic, electron-hadron scattering mode, when upgraded to higher energies or eventually as an injector for the next big machine. The various technical and physics chapters, provided by 61 authors, characterise the fascinating opportunities the LHC offers for the next two decades ahead (possibly longer), with the goal to substantially advance our understanding of nature.
An accessible look at the hottest topic in physics and the experiments that will transform our understanding of the universe The biggest news in science today is the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle-smasher, and the anticipation of finally discovering the Higgs boson particle. But what is the Higgs boson and why is it often referred to as the God Particle? Why are the Higgs and the LHC so important? Getting a handle on the science behind the LHC can be difficult for anyone without an advanced degree in particle physics, but you don't need to go back to school to learn about it. In Collider, award-winning physicist Paul Halpern provides you with the tools you need to understand what the LHC is and what it hopes to discover. Comprehensive, accessible guide to the theory, history, and science behind experimental high-energy physics Explains why particle physics could well be on the verge of some of its greatest breakthroughs, changing what we think we know about quarks, string theory, dark matter, dark energy, and the fundamentals of modern physics Tells you why the theoretical Higgs boson is often referred to as the God particle and how its discovery could change our understanding of the universe Clearly explains why fears that the LHC could create a miniature black hole that could swallow up the Earth amount to a tempest in a very tiny teapot "Best of 2009 Sci-Tech Books (Physics)"-Library Journal "Halpern makes the search for mysterious particles pertinent and exciting by explaining clearly what we don't know about the universe, and offering a hopeful outlook for future research."-Publishers Weekly Includes a new author preface, "The Fate of the Large Hadron Collider and the Future of High-Energy Physics" The world will not come to an end any time soon, but we may learn a lot more about it in the blink of an eye. Read Collider and find out what, when, and how.
This concise primer reviews the latest developments in the field of jets. Jets are collinear sprays of hadrons produced in very high-energy collisions, e.g. at the LHC or at a future hadron collider. They are essential to and ubiquitous in experimental analyses, making their study crucial. At present LHC energies and beyond, massive particles around the electroweak scale are frequently produced with transverse momenta that are much larger than their mass, i.e., boosted. The decay products of such boosted massive objects tend to occupy only a relatively small and confined area of the detector and are observed as a single jet. Jets hence arise from many different sources and it is important to be able to distinguish the rare events with boosted resonances from the large backgrounds originating from Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). This requires familiarity with the internal properties of jets, such as their different radiation patterns, a field broadly known as jet substructure. This set of notes begins by providing a phenomenological motivation, explaining why the study of jets and their substructure is of particular importance for the current and future program of the LHC, followed by a brief but insightful introduction to QCD and to hadron-collider phenomenology. The next section introduces jets as complex objects constructed from a sequential recombination algorithm. In this context some experimental aspects are also reviewed. Since jet substructure calculations are multi-scale problems that call for all-order treatments (resummations), the bases of such calculations are discussed for simple jet quantities. With these QCD and jet physics ingredients in hand, readers can then dig into jet substructure itself. Accordingly, these notes first highlight the main concepts behind substructure techniques and introduce a list of the main jet substructure tools that have been used over the past decade. Analytic calculations are then provided for several families of tools, the goal being to identify their key characteristics. In closing, the book provides an overview of LHC searches and measurements where jet substructure techniques are used, reviews the main take-home messages, and outlines future perspectives.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, is the world's largest and highest energy and highest intensity particle accelerator. Here is a timely book with several perspectives on the hoped-for discoveries from the LHC.This book provides an overview on the techniques that will be crucial for finding new physics at the LHC, as well as perspectives on the importance and implications of the discoveries. Among the accomplished contributors to this book are leaders and visionaries in the field of particle physics beyond the Standard Model, including two Nobel Laureates (Steven Weinberg and Frank Wilczek), and presumably some future Nobel Laureates, plus top younger theorists and experimenters. With its blend of popular and technical contents, the book will have wide appeal, not only to physical scientists but also to those in related fields.