The Large Hadron Collider

A Marvel of Technology

Lyndon Evans

• Publisher: EPFL PRESS
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN:
  9782889144822
• Print ISBN:
  9782889152827

The discovery of the higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider has been a triumph of human ingenuity and of massive international collaboration. Many thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians were behind the construction of the machine, detectors and computing infrastructure needed to analyze the huge amount of data produced by it. In this book a few key members of this team have agreed to write about the science and engineering of this immense project as they lived it. The final chapter describes the efforts of the ATLAS and CMS to uncover the holy grail of particle physics, a literal "needle in the haystack" in the data the LHC has produced, provoking the front page of The Economist to declare "A giant leap for science". Book contributors: Lyndon Evans, John Ellis, Jean-Luc Baldy, Luz Anastasia Lopez-Hernandez, John A. Osborne, Anders Unnervik, Lucio Rossi, Ezio Todesco, Pierre Strubin, Cristoforo Benvenuti, Philippe Lebrun, Laurent Tavian, Volker Mertens, Brennan Goddard, Trevor Linnecar, Tejinder Virdee, Peter Jenni, Tatsuya Nakada, Ju¨rgen Schukraft, Chris Fabjan, Les Robertson, John Harvey, Pere Mato, and Michael Lamont.

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• 1.0 THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER: AN INTRODUCTION – Lyndon Evans
• 2.0 THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS BEHIND THE LHC – John Ellis
• 3.1 THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE LHC. Lessons in Big Science Management and Contracting – Anders Unnervik
• 3.2 THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE LHC. Civil Engineering Highlights – Jean-Luc Baldy,Luz Anastasia Lopez-Hernandez and John Osborne
• 4.1 THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE LHC. Superconducting Magnets – Lucio Rossi and Ezio Todesco
• 4.2 THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE LHC. The LHC and its Vacuum Technology – Pierre Strubin and Cristoforo Benvenuti
• 4.3 THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE LHC. The Cryogenics Challenge of the LHC – Philippe Lebrun and Laurent Tavian
• 4.4 THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE LHC. Moving the Beam into and out of the LHC – Volker Mertens and Brennan Goddard
• 4.5 THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE LHC. Capturing, Acceleratingand Holding the Beam – Trevor Linnecar
• 5.1 THE EXPERIMENTS. Particle Detectionat the LHC: an Introduction – Tejinder S. Virdee
• 5.2 THE EXPERIMENTS. The Compact Muon Solenoid Detector at LHC – Tejinder S. Virdee
• 5.3 THE EXPERIMENTS. ATLAS – Peter Jenni
• 5.4 THE EXPERIMENTS. ALICE – Juergen Schukraft and Christian Fabjan
• 5.5 THE EXPERIMENTS. LHCb Experiments – Tatsuya Nakada
• 5.6 THE EXPERIMENTS. LHC Data Analysis and the Grid – John Harvey, Pere Mato, and Les Robertson
• 6.1 COMMISSIONING AND OPERATION. Disaster – Lyndon Evans
• 6.2 COMMISSIONING AND OPERATION. Commissioning – Michael Lamont
• 7.0 DISCOVERY OF THE HIGGS BOSON BY ATLAS AND CMS – Peter Jenni and Tejinder S. Virdee
• Glossary