Around midnight on April 22, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has set a new world record for beam intensity at csniffing beams with a luminosity never before achieved(4.67 × 10 raised to 32 cm-2 s-1). This surpasses the previous record of 4,024 × 10 raised to 32 cm-2 s-1 achieved by the Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab (USA) in 2010, and represents an important milestone in the start-up of the LHC.
“Beam intensity is key to the success of the LHCso this is a very important step, “said CERN CEO Rolf Heuer.” Higher intensity means more data, and more data means more discovery potential. “Luminosity provides a measure of how many collisions occur in a given space. particle accelerator:the higher the luminosity, the more particles are likely to collide. This phenomenon is important when looking for rare processes. If the Higgs boson exists, for example, they will be produced very rarely, so large amounts of data will be required to confirm or disprove their existence.
Current LHC activity is scheduled to continue through the end of 2012. This will give the experiments time to collect enough data to fully explore the energy range of 3.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV) per beam before preparing the large collider for operation at higher energy ranges. By the end of the current running period, scientists should know whether or not the Higgs boson (a hypothetical elementary particle predicted by the standard model of particle physics) exists.
“There is great enthusiasm at CERN”, said Sergio Bertolucci, director of Research and Scientific Computing at this international scientific center, “and a tangible feeling that we are on the threshold of a new discovery.” After two weeks of preparing the LHC for this new level of beam intensity,the machine is now in a continuous operation phase, which is scheduled to last until the end of the year. This will be followed by a short technical shutdown, before activity resumes in 2012.
