First collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

Video by Loïc Quertenmont (CP3, UCLouvain).
CMS Experiment. Frog, the event displayer.

Real data. One of the first collisions of protons at the particle collider LHC (CERN) on 30 March 2010 at the record energy of 7 TeV. Particle tracks and energy deposits recorded by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector.

First an outside view of the CMS detector (onion layered structure, 21m long, 15m high, 12500 tonnes): in red the muon chamber sub-detector, the outermost layer of CMS. In blue, the two crossing bunches of protons. In green, the Tracker and Pixel sub-detectors, the innermost parts.

Each bunch is about 10 billion protons, each proton has an energy of 3.5 TeV (about half a millionth of Joule).

A proton in a bunch collides with a proton in the other bunch. From this single head-on collision, dozens of particles are produced. Short-lived particles decay rapidly, only their decay products and other long-lived particles are detected/recorded.

The electrically charged particles (electrons, muons, charged hadrons) leave tracks as recorded by the Pixel and the Tracker detector. The intense magnetic field of CMS bends the trajectory of these particles (green hits and yellow paths).

Particles continue to propagate up to the Electromagnetic Calorimeter. This sub-detector is designed to "stop" electrons and photons. Green blocks show the amount of energy deposited by these particles in the Electromagnetic Calorimeter.

Only long-lived hadrons and muons escape from the Electromagnetic Calorimeter layer. In between the Electromagnetic Calorimeter and the Muon Chambers lies the Hadronic Calorimeter: ... hadrons stop there (particles made of quarks and gluons). The energy deposits are given by the blue blocks.

No hit in the Muon Chambers (outermost red pads): no muon produced during the collision.

Detect 4 muons in a collision event and it might well be a Higgs boson has been produced!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• LHC
• CMS
• CERN
• particle
• collision
• TeV
• protons
• particle physics
• high energy physics
• Large Hadron Collider

[nemtec]

An amazing first glimpse of the physics at high energy ! We are at the beginning of a new era for physics. Now, the hunt begins.

[bust3rblader]

What I do not understand: The number of views at this video compared to the number of views at...every other video. We are about to witness the birth of our universe...

[bribribri56]

brilliant video

[jull23]

is this suppose to mean that every "existing matter" have been created into this LHC?

[kwizlert]

trololol