LHC First Beam
Update: On September 10 at 4:28 AM EST the first beam was circulated in the LHC. This much heralded event marks the initial turn on of what will be the world's most powerful accelerator.
Columbus Dispatch article featuring OSU Physics
Official Cern Press Release
Atlas event pictures
CMS pictures and commentary by former OSU post-doc Darin Acosta
ALICE event pictures
At approximately 3:00 A.M. EST September 10, 2008, the first circulating proton beams will be injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. Live coverage of this highly publicized event is available by webcast from CERN.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument which is designed to greatly enhance our understanding of the Universe. The LHC is made up of intersecting rings 27 km in circumference and spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100m underground.
When fully operational within the next two months it will be the world's highest energy accelerator, colliding proton beams circulating in opposite directions with a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV. It is a particle accelerator to be used by physicists to study the smallest known particles -- the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionize our understanding, from the miniscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.
The Ohio State University Department of Physics is collaborating on the three largest experiments, ALICE, ATLAS and CMS , all of which are based on general-purpose detectors to analyze the myriad of particles produced by the collisions in the accelerator. The ALICE, ATLAS, and CMS detectors are installed in three huge underground caverns located around the ring of the LHC. Ohio State is the only institution in the U.S. collaborating on three of the four LHC detectors. The experimental efforts are jointly funded by the NSF and the Department of Energy. The Ohio State ALICE group is headed by Prof. Humanic and Prof. Lisa. The Ohio State ATLAS group is headed by Prof. Gan, Prof. Kass, and Prof. Kagan, while the Ohio State CMS group is headed by Prof. Durkin, Prof. Ling, Prof. Hughes, and Prof. Winer.
The detectors are the largest ever built and each represents the effort of more than 1000 physicists from countries throughout the world. Design and construction of the detectors began 18 years ago. As an example, the central portion of the CMS detector is shown below. Over 200,000 channels of readout electronics for the Endcap Muon chambers were designed and built at Ohio State University. Muon chambers are visible as the copper colored trapezoidal boxes. The Ohio State built electronics are mounted on the chambers inside electrostatic shields.
