PR06.07
22.06.07
CERN announces new start-up schedule for world’s most powerful particle accelerator
Geneva, 22
June 2007. Speaking at the 142nd
session of the CERN[1] <#_ftn1>
Council today,
the Organization’s Director General Robert Aymar announced that the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) will start up in May 2008, taking the first steps towards
studying physics at a new high-energy frontier. A low-energy run originally
scheduled for this year has been dropped as the result of a number of minor
delays accumulated over the final months of LHC installation and commissioning,
coupled with the failure in March of a pressure test in one of the machine’s
components.
The LHC is a scientific instrument of unprecedented complexity,
and at 27 kilometres in circumference, the world’s largest superconducting
installation. Cooling the first sector of the machine to a temperature of 1.9 K
(-271.3°C), colder than outer space, began earlier this year and has provided an
important learning process. The first sector cool down has taken longer than
scheduled, but has allowed the LHC’s operations team to iron out teething
troubles and gain experience that will be applied to the machine’s seven
remaining sectors. Now cold, tests on powering up the sector have begun and the
cool down of a second sector will soon be underway.
In March, a magnet
assembly known as the inner triplet, provided to CERN as part of the
contribution of the US to the LHC project, failed a pressure test. A repair has
been identified and is currently being implemented.
“The low-energy run
at the end of this year was extremely tight due to a number of small delays, but
the inner triplet problem now makes it impossible,” said LHC Project Leader
Lyn Evans. “We’ll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen,
and will commission the machine to full energy in one go.”
The new
schedule foresees successively cooling and powering each of the LHC’s sectors in
turn this year. Throughout the winter, hardware commissioning will continue,
allowing the LHC to be ready for high-energy running by the time CERN’s
accelerators are switched on in the spring. Commissioning a new particle
accelerator is a complex task. Beams will be injected at low energy and low
intensity to give the operations team experience in driving the new machine.
Intensity and energy will then slowly be increased.
“There’s no big red
button when you’re starting up a new accelerator,” said Evans, “but we
aim to be seeing high energy collisions by the summer.”
Installation of
the large and equally innovative apparatus for experiments at this new and
unique facility will continue at the same time. This huge effort will be
completed on a schedule consistent with that of the accelerator.
In another
important development, the CERN Council agreed to increase CERN’s funding over
the years 2008-2011 as an important first step towards implementing the
decisions Council made in July 2006 for a European strategy for particle
physics.
“This is an important vote for the future of particle physics in
Europe,” said CERN Director General Robert Aymar, “it allows us to
consolidate the laboratory’s infrastructure, prepare for future upgrades of the
LHC and to re-launch a programme of R&D for the long-term
future.”
The LHC relies on a chain of particle accelerators, the oldest
of which was constructed in the 1950s. Their successful operation is essential
to the smooth running of the LHC. These additional resources will be used to
consolidate CERN’s infrastructure, and build on it for the
future.
Note for Editor:
[1] <#_ftnref1>
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is
the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in
Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech
Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy,
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and
the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United
States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer
status.
Contact:
CERN - Press
Office
CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 767 21
41
Tel: +41 22 767 34 32
Fax: +41 22 785 02
47
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