The Latest from the LHC

The final magnet, a quadrupole magnet designed to focus the beam, was lowered and transported to Sector 3-4 on Thursday last week. With all the magnets now underground, work in the tunnel will be focused on connecting the magnets together, while on the surface teams will be shifting their attention to replenishing the LHC’s supply of spare magnets.

"Now we will split our ‘troop’ into two parts", explains Lucio Rossi, Deputy Head of the Technology Department. "The main group will be directly involved in the tunnel to ramp up with interconnection work as fast as possible. The second group will rebuild our stock of spare magnets."

In total 53 magnets were removed from Sector 3-4. Sixteen magnets that sustained minimal damage were refurbished and put back into the tunnel. The remaining 37 were replaced by spares, depleting the number of reserve magnets to nearly zero. As Rossi explains, the last magnet to be lowered "is really one of the last magnets of our stock - we could say it is the spare of the spares."

"Most of the spare magnets were ready to be ‘cryostated’ - put onto the cryogenic cover - and tested before going down to the tunnel. The final magnet, however, was still unfinished. "One of the reasons it took so long is because the ‘cold mass’ – the magnet itself - still had to be completed", confirms Rossi.

Once all interconnection work is completed in the tunnel, work will continue on the surface to repair the remaining damaged Sector 3-4 magnets to be kept as spares. By the end of the year, 15 should have been completed.