Half way round the LHC

The LHC operations teams are preparing the machine for circulating beams and things are going very smoothly. ALICE and LHCb are getting used to observing particle tracks coming from the LHC beams. During the weekend of 7-8 November, CMS also  saw its first signals from beams dumped just upstream of  the experiment cavern.
 

Particles are smoothly making their way around the 27 km circumference of the LHC. Last weekend (7-8 November), the first bunches of injection energy protons completed their journey (anti-clockwise) through three octants of the LHC’s circumference and were dumped in a collimator just before entering the CMS cavern. The particles produced by the impact of the protons on the tertiary collimators (used to stop the beam) left their tracks in the calorimeters and the muon chambers of the experiment. The more delicate inner detectors were switched off for protection reasons.

Six of the eight sectors of the LHC have now been hardware commissioned to allow the passage of beams at 1.2 TeV. The remaining two (Sectors 3-4 and 8-1) will be powered up in the coming week.

If all goes well, in just over one week from now, the beams could circulate in both pipes of the LHC. The first low-energy collisions should follow shortly after.

Watch the video:

by CERN Bulletin