UC Santa Barbara has key role in Large Hadron Collider project

September 11, 2008

Earlier today, some 300 feet below the Earth's surface, in a circular tunnel so extensive that it travels from Switzerland into France and back again, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva fired the first beams of protons that they hope will eventually produce history-making science.

A contingent of more than 40 faculty members, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, engineers, technicians, and undergraduates from UC Santa Barbara have worked for eight years to help construct the experimental apparatus. The UCSB group is part of an international effort that is now embarking on a 15-year quest to try to answer fundamental questions about the universe.

The startup of the LHC marked a milestone for the UCSB particle physics program. The group has played a key role in constructing one of four major experiments now in place - the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a complex array of instruments for detecting subatomic particles. The device weighs more than 12,000 tons and is as tall as a four-story building.

UCSB's team is led by four members of its experimental high-energy physics faculty. Professor Joseph Incandela has been in Switzerland for the past year, shepherding the CMS experiment as deputy physics coordinator. Shuttling back and forth between Santa Barbara and Switzerland have been professors Claudio Campagnari, Jeffrey Richman, and David Stuart. The faculty members are unanimous in their praise for CERN's monumental effort in building the LHC, the world's largest particle accelerator.

"This is frontier science on a grand international scale," says Michael Witherell, vice chancellor for research at UCSB, of the university's role in the LHC. "It is remarkable how many important contributions our faculty and students have already made to this historic experiment."

UCSB's initial role in the CMS experiment was to build part of the particle tracking system, which measures the paths of particles produced in the proton-proton collisions.

By combining the information from all parts of the CMS detector, scientists can reconstruct an electronic image of what happens in each collision.

According to Incandela, UCSB delivered 2.5 million channels of particle detectors, which were meticulously constructed in cleanrooms in the university's physics department. The detectors were of "extremely high quality," Incandela says, noting a failure rate of only 0.02 percent. "Our group then helped assemble and test the detectors at CERN."

CMS is a huge project involving thousands of scientists from all over the world. Many U.S. universities have contributed time and staff to CMS and other LHC experiments. UCSB scientists and other staff members say they are proud to have played a leading role in the construction of the detector's tracking system. One-third of this enormous system was assembled and tested at UCSB. The high-energy physics faculty members say that the contributions of many UCSB students and staff over the past eight years were essential. "I think it's pretty extraordinary what the group has done," says Richman.

"This is a fantastic educational opportunity for our students," Richman says. Now that construction of the detector is complete, the focus of the UCSB group has shifted to preparations for analyzing the vast quantity of data that will start to pour out of the detector in a few months. Eventually, about 1 billion collisions per second will be electronically imaged by the detector. Of these, several hundred images per second will be recorded for detailed study.

The UCSB group is funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy, with additional support from the National Science Foundation. "The university helps us in many ways, but the main funding for the group's operations is provided by the Department of Energy's Office of Science," Richman says. "They have treated us extremely well and we appreciate it."

Until now, the world's biggest accelerator has been at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, also known as Fermilab, near Chicago, Ill. Witherell was director of Fermilab from 1999 to 2005, when he returned to lead UCSB's research administration. He has strong ties to the CMS experiment. "I spent my life doing particle physics research, and I am anticipating great discoveries from CMS," Witherell says.

The turning on of the LHC represents the start of a scientific program that will address some of the most pressing questions in particle physics and cosmology. The UCSB group has formed several teams to analyze the mountain of data that will be generated.

"CMS is a powerful and versatile detector, which can be used to perform many different experiments," Stuart explains. Noting that high-energy collisions can create sub-atomic particles from energy, Stuart adds, "If we are lucky, we may discover particles that would explain the dark matter inferred by astrophysicists from observations of galactic motions. This would be really exciting."

Particle physicists have been searching for a deep understanding of matter and energy, including an explanation for the origin of mass, which could be found if physicists are able to discover the so-called "Higgs boson,'' the particle that causes other particles to have mass. Other theorists have speculated that the LHC could even reveal new spatial dimensions with properties vastly different from those with which we are familiar.

With so many possibilities for discovery, the anticipation for the startup of this program has been enormous. "It's great that the machine has turned on," Campagnari says. "I don't think we're going to turn it on in September and make discoveries in October. But discoveries could start coming soon and could happen over many years."

"This is a historic undertaking, and it is great to be part of it," Incandela says. "We are working with some of the top particle physicists of our era to prepare for what we might see. The range of possibilities is broad, but the most incredible aspect of this program is that whatever we see will be very important to our understanding of the basic forces of nature."

University of California - Santa Barbara

---

---

	Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider by Amir D. Aczel (Author) The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest, and by far the most powerful, machine ever built. A project of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, its audacious purpose is to re-create, in a 16.5-mile-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss countryside, the immensely hot and dense conditions that existed some 13.7 billion years ago within the first trillionth of a second after the fiery birth of our universe. The collider is now crashing protons at record energy levels never created by scientists before, and it will reach even higher levels by 2013. Its superconducting magnets guide two beams of protons in opposite directions around the track. After accelerating the beams to 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light, it collides the protons head-on, annihilating them in a...
	The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider by Don Lincoln (Author) The highest-energy particle accelerator ever built, the Large Hadron Collider runs under the border between France and Switzerland. It leapt into action on September 10, 2008, amid unprecedented global press coverage and widespread fears that its energy would create tiny black holes that could destroy the earth. By smashing together particles smaller than atoms, the LHC recreates the conditions hypothesized to have existed just moments after the big bang. Physicists expect it to aid our understanding of how the universe came into being and to show us much about the standard model of particle physics—even possibly proving the existence of the mysterious Higgs boson. In exploring what the collider does and what it might find, Don Lincoln explains what the LHC is likely to teach us about...
	Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Paul Halpern (Author) An accessible look at the hottest topic in physics and the experiments that will transform our understanding of the universeThe biggest news in science today is the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle-smasher, and the anticipation of finally discovering the Higgs boson particle. But what is the Higgs boson and why is it often referred to as the God Particle? Why are the Higgs and the LHC so important? Getting a handle on the science behind the LHC can be difficult for anyone without an advanced degree in particle physics, but you don't need to go back to school to learn about it. In Collider, award-winning physicist Paul Halpern provides you with the tools you need to understand what the LHC is and what it hopes to discover.Comprehensive, accessible guide...
	The Large Hadron Collider by Lyndon Evans (Editor) This richly illustrated, full color book dissects the technology of the LHC into its component parts, showing how state-of-the-art techniques have been applied to beam control (injection, stabilization, acceleration, and dumping); cryogenics; superconducting magnet technology; and vacuum. It also describes the civil engineering and logistical challenges of the construction of the machine as well as the theoretical challenges that drove the scientific community to build the LHC. Each of the experiments is explained in terms of scientific goals, new methods of particle detection, and the specific challenges of handling the millions of gigabytes of data produced every second. Written by the lead scientists involved with the LHC, this book offers a testimonial of this marvelous endeavor from...
	The Large Hadron Collider: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe (Astronomers' Universe) by Martin Beech (Author) It may at first seem that the world of subatomic physics is far removed from our every day lives. Isn’t it all just a waste of time and taxpayers' money? Hopefully, all who read this book will come to a different conclusion. Collider physics is all about our origins, and this aspect alone makes it worthy of our very best attention. The experiments conducted within the vast collider chambers are at the forefront of humanity’s quest to unweave the great tapestry that is the universe. Everything is connected. Within the macrocosm is the microcosm. By knowing how matter is structured, how atoms and elementary particles interact, and what forces control the interactions between the particles, we discover further clues as to why the universe is the way it is, and we uncover glimpses of how...
	Physics at the Large Hadron Collider by Amitava Datta (Editor), B. Mukhopadhyaya (Editor), A. Raychaudhuri (Editor) In an epoch when particle physics is awaiting a major step forward, the Large Hydron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva will soon be operational. It will collide a beam of high energy protons with another similar beam circulation in the same 27 km tunnel but in the opposite direction, resulting in the production of many elementary particles some never created in the laboratory before. It is widely expected that the LHC will discover the Higgs boson, the particle which supposedly lends masses to all other fundamental particles. In addition, the question as to whether there is some new law of physics at such high energy is likely to be answered through this experiment. The present volume contains a collection of articles written by international experts, both theoreticians and...
	No Canary in the Quanta: Who Gets to Decide if the Large Hadron Collider is Worth Gambling Our Planet? by Harry V. Lehmann (Author) Public interest trial attorney Harry Lehmann is on the case of what could become the greatest gamble our planet has ever faced. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is housed in a tunnel 17 miles in circumference, more than 500 feet underground, at the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to collide opposing beams of protons at near light speed. LHC was shut down days after its September 2008 launch by a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets. Now CERN claims it has repaired the original defects and resulting damage, so that it can "safely" fire up the LHC again. But this is the largest science experiment in our planet's history, and its "laboratory" is the planet itself. The stakes could not be higher. No...
	You, Robot?: The Vortex at the Large Hadron Collider by Mr. David J. Fisher (Author), Mr. Michael Shevack (Editor) A whole new "take" on robots. Not since Asimov has the Robot genre been given such a new approach. Best SciFi book of the season and beautifully printed. You will love this book. It is tied into String Theory, 12 dimensions, the Large Hadron Collider, dimensional travel, Higgs Bosons, Robots living in the other dimensions, and a lot more.
	True Nature of the Higgs Mechanism: A Hypothesis Associated with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Geneva by Chandrakanth Natekar (Author), Prashanth Vitla (Author), Prashanth Vitla (Cover Design), Sai Sambat (Cover Design), Sudesh Mahan (Cover Design) "Science is a simple phenomenon of Nature, but it is the known that is preventing us from mastering the unknown". True Nature of the Higgs Mechanism dwells upon some of the fundamental aspects of the universal binding force and hitherto unrecognized balancing force. Its prime focus is on the Higgs Mechanism and the puzzling mass of W & Z bosons. The hypotheses presented in this book will reveal the 'True Nature of the Higgs Mechanism' and the "True Nature of W & Z Bosons". These hypotheses can be experimentally verified at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Geneva. Alternately, the available data of the previous experiments of the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), Fermilab's Tevatron, Stanford SLAC and other colliders can also be used to check the scientific validity of these...
	Large Hadron Collider Phenomenology (Scottish Graduate Series) by M. Kramer (Editor), F.J.P. Soler (Editor) With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under construction and due to come online in 2007, it is appropriate to engage in a focused review on LHC phenomenology. At a time when most of the experimental effort is centered on detector construction and software development, it is vitally important to direct the experimental community and, in particular, new researchers on the physics phenomena expected from the LHC. Large Hadron Collider Phenomenology covers the capabilities of LHC, from searches for the Higgs boson and physics beyond the standard model to detailed studies of quantum chromodynamics, the B-physics sectors, and the properties of hadronic matter at high energy density as realized in heavy-ion collisions. Written by experienced researchers and experimentalists, this reference...