The Large Hadron Collider

Siddharth Srivastava

What is LHC?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle Accelerator built to produce very high energy particle collisions in order to study the smallest known particles the fundamental building blocks of all things.

This synchrotron is designed to collide opposing particle beams of either protons at an energy of 7 tera-electron Volts. Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' either protons or lead ions travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy.

The Fastest
Tr i l l i o n s o f p r o t o n s travel the 16.5mile-long tunnel 11 , 0 0 0 t i m e s a second (thats 670,626,025 mph)

The Hottest
Colliding protons generate temperatures one billion times hotter than the center of the sun

The Coldest
LHCs superconducting magnets operate at 456F Colder than the vacuum of outer space

The Biggest
Largest, most complex detectors ever built Study the tiniest particles with incredible precision

The Boldest
The worlds most extensive computing system 170 sites in 34 countries, 100,000 computer processors

The Emptiest
Particles travel in vacuum
More atmosphere on the moon than in the LHC

LHC?
LARGE due to its Size (27 km in circumference).

COLLIDER because the particles are collided at four places where the machine intersect.

HADRON because it accelerates PROTONS or IONS.

Developed by CERN (Conseil Europen Pour la Recherche Nuclaire), located in a tunnel of 27Kms in circumference and lies 175 metres below the ground.
France

Switzerland

Why LHC?
Why do we exist?

What else is out there?

How did we get here?

What is the universe made of?

T h e Ta r g e t

To understand the Origin of Universe.

To understand the Origin of Mass.

To find out the Black matter and Black Energy.

To understand matter and antimatter in a much better way.

To find out the Higgs particle.

How does the LHC works?

The LHC is designed to collide two counter rotating beams of protons travelling close to the speed of light with very high energies in separate beam pipes. Proton-proton collisions are foreseen at an energy of 7 teV per beam.

The beams move around the LHC ring inside a continuous ultrahigh vacuum guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field, achieved using superconducting electromagnets. Superconducting magnets are built from coils of special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state, efficiently conducting electricity without resistance or loss of energy. This requires chilling the magnets to about -271C a temperature colder than outer space and are cooled by a huge cryogenics system. The beams will be stored at high energy for hours. During this time collisions take place inside the four main LHC experiments.

The Science Behind LHC

Structure of Atom: Comprises of three types of Subatomic particles i.e. Protons, Electrons and Neutrons. Matter and Antimatter: Matter is basically defined as that which has mass and occupies volume. Antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles. Quarks and Hadrons: A Quark is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons.

The Science Behind LHC

Higgs Boson :The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist in particle physics. The existence of the particle is postulated as a means of resolving inconsistencies in current theoretical physics. The Big Bang Theory :This theory states that the universe was originally extremely hot and dense at some finite time in the past and has since cooled by expanding to the present diluted state and continues to expand today.

Structure of the LHC

I. II. III. IV. V.

VI.

ATLAS: A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS CMS: The Compact Muon Solenoid LHCb: Large Hadron Collider Beauty ALICE: A Large Ion Collider Experiment TOTEM: TOTal Elastic and diffractive cross section Measurement LHCf: Large Hadron Collider forward

Apart from above 6 detectors , there are Linear Particle Accelerators and Proton Synchrotrons.

How does it starts?

Source: bottles of Hydrogen gas Protons are obtained by removing electrons from hydrogen atoms. they are injected in following steps:

The linear accelerator

The PS Booster

Proton Synchrotron

Large Hadron Collider(LHC)

Super Proton Synchrotron

Protons will circulate in the LHC for 20 minutes before reaching the maximum speed and energy.

ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS)

Investigates a wide range of physics, including the search for the Higgs boson, extra dimensions, and particles that could make up dark matter.

Records sets of measurements through six different detecting subsystems on the particles created in collisions - their paths, energies, and their identities.

The huge magnet system in the ATLAS bends the paths of charged particles for momentum measurement.

I n s i d e AT L A S

Particle detection in atlas

Collision in atlas

The CMS detector

The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid detector)

CMS has the same scientific goals as the ATLAS experiment, it uses different technical solutions and design of its detector magnet system to achieve these.

The CMS detector is built around a huge solenoid magnet. This cylindrical coil of superconducting cable generates a magnetic field of 4 teslas, about 100 000 times that of the Earth.

The magnetic field is confined by a steel 'yoke' that forms the bulk of the detector's weight of 12 500 tonnes.

12,500 ton weight, 15 m diameter, 22 m long

CMS detector x-ray

Particle detection in CMS

LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty)

It specialises in investigating the slight differences between matter and antimatter by studying a type of particle called the 'beauty quark', or 'b quark'.

Experiment uses a series of subdetectors to detect mainly forward particles Quark will be created by the LHC before they decay quickly into other form thus to catch the b-quarks, LHCb has developed sophisticated movable tracking detectors close to the path of the beams circling in the LHC.

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment)

The data obtained allows to study a state of matter known as quark-gluon plasma. The protons and neutrons will For the ALICE experiment, the 'melt', freeing the quarks from LHC will collide lead ions to their bonds with the gluons. This recreate the conditions just should create a state of matter after the Big Bang under called quark-gluon plasma laboratory conditions Thus The ALICE collaboration plans to study the quark-gluon plasma as it expands and cools, observing how it progressively gives rise to the particles that constitute the matter of our Universe today.

ALICE X-RAY

Worldwide LHC Computing Grid

4 experiments 150 million sensors each 600 million collisions every second The Large Hadron Collider will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year!

DECEMBER 2012????????
People sometimes refer to recreating the Big Bang, but this is misleading. What they actually mean is: recreating the conditions and energies that existed shortly after the start of the Big Bang, not the moment at which the Big Bang started recreating conditions on a micro-scale, not on the same scale as the original Big Bang and recreating energies that are continually being produced naturally (by high energy cosmic rays hitting the earths atmosphere) but at will and inside sophisticated detectors that track what is happening

No Big Bang so no possibility of creating a new Universe.

T h a n k Yo u

Questions?