Last large piece of ATLAS detector lowered underground
Argonne employees play key role in acquiring, selecting, storing and accessing data
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ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb 29, 2008) — Today, researchers in the U.S. ATLAS collaboration
joined colleagues around the world to celebrate a pivotal landmark in the construction
of the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) – the lowering of the final piece of the
ATLAS particle detector into the underground collision hall at CERN in Geneva,
Switzerland.
Experiments conducted at this revolutionary LHC facility, poised
to become the world's most powerful particle accelerator, may help scientists
unravel some of the deepest mysteries in particle physics. The U.S. branch
of the collaboration (U.S. ATLAS), which is based at the U.S. Department
of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven
National Laboratory and includes scientists
and technicians from Argonne National Laboratory, built and delivered several
key elements of the ATLAS detector.
"We're proud of the teams involved in this international scientific endeavor
- one of the largest collaborative efforts ever attempted in the physical sciences," said
Dennis Kovar, acting associate director for High
Energy Physics in DOE's Office
of Science. "This technical landmark brings us a huge step closer to unveiling
a new level of understanding of our universe."
Of the almost 2,100 participants in the ATLAS collaboration, about 420 are
U.S. physicists, engineers and graduate students. Hailing from 38 universities
and four national laboratories, these U.S. collaborators are supported by DOE
and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The last piece of ATLAS lowered into the ATLAS experimental cavern is one
of two elements known as the small wheels. The two ATLAS small wheels, though
little in comparison to the rest of the ATLAS detector, are each about 30 feet
in diameter and weigh 100 tons. The wheels are covered with sensitive detectors
that will be used to identify and measure the momentum of subatomic particles
called muons that are created in collisions at the LHC. The entire detector
system has an area equal to three football fields, consisting of 100 million
independent electronic channels. As charged particles pass through a magnetic
field created by superconducting magnets, this detector has the ability to
accurately track them to the precision of the width of a human hair.
"This is a remarkable milestone in the complicated construction of the ATLAS
detector," said Joseph Dehmer, director of the Physics Division at the NSF. "The
LHC is one of the most exciting physics experiments for this decade and beyond.
We are impressed by the hundreds of U.S. university and national laboratory
scientists who are working hard to make this extraordinary project a reality.
We look forward to the groundbreaking results that are now just around the
corner."
Involving the work of 450 physicists from 48 institutions around the world,
lowering this last small wheel marks the end of a decade of planning and construction
of the muon spectrometer system.
DOE's Argonne National Laboratory has made significant contributions in all
stages of acquiring, selecting, storing and accessing the data from ATLAS.
Argonne physicists helped to design and construct the Hadronic Tile Calorimeter,
which will measure the energy produced after tiny atomic particles called hadrons
strike the sensor array.
The complicated network of data processing nodes that captures the signals
from the array also owes its existence in part to work done by Argonne researchers.
This network, called the "trigger," then selects the most interesting interactions
for further analysis.
Argonne scientists also developed the software that permits the organization
and sharing of the large amounts of data produced by the detector.
"Argonne's contributions to the ATLAS project illustrate the laboratory's
long commitment to collaboration and show that we continue to work right at
the leading edge of physics," said Argonne Senior Physicist James Proudfoot.
Experiments at the LHC will allow physicists to take a big leap in their exploration
of the universe. The ATLAS detector may help its scientists unravel some of
the deepest mysteries in particle physics such as the origin of mass or the
identification of dark matter. The ATLAS collaboration will now focus on commissioning
the detector in preparation for the start-up of the LHC this summer.
For more information, visit http://www.atlas.ch/.
Photos are available at http://atlasexperiment.org/atlas_photos/muoncham/muoncham_gen.html
Video is available at http://atlasexperiment.org/webcams.html
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.
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