Large Hadron Collider breaks own record

“Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC’s overall design, and the improvements we’ve made since the breakdown in September 2008,” says CERN’s director for accelerators and technology, Steve Myers . “And it’s a great credit to the patience and dedication of the LHC team."The current LHC run began on 20 November 2009 , with the first circulating beam at 0.45 TeV. Shortly afterward on 23 November, two circulating beams went around the collider, followed by a new energy record of 1.18 TeV on 29 November.By the time the LHC switched off for general maintenance and the holiday period on 16 December, another record had been set with collisions recorded at 2.36 TeV .More than a million particle collisions were already recorded in 2009 from the four major experiments, ALICE , ATLAS , CMS , and LHCb . The first physics papers from the experiments were soon to follow with papers from ATLAS appearing this week .Higher energy collisions beyond 2.36 TeV require higher electrical currents in the LHC magnet circuits, which placed exacting demands on the new machine protection systems—built after the initial accident at CERN—which have now been readied for the task.The fact that the LHC has been running so smoothly since operations restarted has led the CERN council to change the colliders’ operating schedule, says CERN’s director general Rolf Heuer ."Traditionally, CERN has operated its accelerators on an annual cycle, running for seven to eight months with a four to five month shutdown each year,” says Heuer. “With the LHC, things are different. Being a cryogenic machine operating at very low temperature, the LHC takes about a month to bring up to room temperature and another month to cool down. A four-month shutdown as part of an annual cycle no longer makes sense for such a machine."Instead, says Heuer, the LHC will run with longer periods of operation—18&ndahs;24 months with a short stop at the end of 2010—accompanied by longer shutdown periods when needed."This will bring enough data across all the potential discovery areas to firmly establish the LHC as the world’s foremost facility for high-energy particle physics,” says Heuer. “Only when the repairs and consolidation are complete after the LHC’s next shutdown will we be fully able to consign 19 September 2008 to the history books."Paul Guinnessy Related links All LHC news picks
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