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Facts and Myths of the LHC, and the consequences for Astronomy
By: Stephen Demjanenko
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Outline
•(Really) Quick History of Particle Physics•LHC
▫Design▫Detectors▫Goals▫Test Run
•Applications of Astrophysics
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Quick History of Particle physics• Began with the study of the atom and has
now progressed to subatomic▫Protons, neutrons, electrons, antimatter as
well as constituents (quarks)• As of the 1970’s particle theory was
condensed into the Standard Model▫Predicts 252 unique particles
• Since then work has been done to go beyond the Standard Model▫The LHC hopes to test this as well as complete
the Standard Model with the discovery of the Higgs
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First Particle Accelerator•John D. Cockcroft and
Ernest Walton▫Cavendish Laboratory
•In 1930 they managed to accelerate protons across a potential of 800 kilovolts
•1932 – they split a lithium nucleus into alpha particles
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Major Particle Accelerators
•Brookhaven National Laboratory – Relativist Heavy Ion Collider ▫Gold and other ions, polarized protons
•Fermilab – Tevatron (proton-antiproton)•Stanford - SLAC (electron-positron)•*CERN – LHC (proton-proton)•Cornell Electron Storage Ring
▫Not major but its here at Cornell▫40 ft below practice football/track fields
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LHC Overview•Built by the
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
•10,000 scientists collaborated
•Cost ~ $8 billion•Generates 1 GBps of
data
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What it is not
•A weapon•Earth’s Doomsday•blackhole/
wormholecreator
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Myths
•Recently Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho sued CERN over the use of the LHC claiming it would destroy the planet▫Did the same thing for
FERMILAB•The case was thrown
out
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Black Hole Myth
•The LHC does have the ability to create a black hole
•However, by Hawking radiation, all black holes are evaporating▫Slow for large black holes but for any black
hole the LHC could create it would evaporate in about 10-17 s
•Once again, the LHC is SAFE
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Cosmic Rays• Cosmic rays are
continually hitting the atmosphere
high energy extragalactic particles
▫Have energies similar/greater than the LHC can achieve Nothing bad has
happened yet The Earth is still here
• LHCf experiment
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So what is it?
•The LHC is the most powerful particle collider ever built▫Took 14 years of planning/construction
•It will collide two proton beams at 14 TeV (7 TeV each beam)▫Also can collider lead ions (2.74 TeV)
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Where is it?
•Located 100m underground
•Is in Switzerland and France
•Located in the old LEP collider tunnel▫Reused existing tunnel
with a few modifications▫3.7m in width, 27km in
circumference
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Design•1,232 dipole magnets, 392 quadrupole
magnets▫Maintains circular path and focuses the
beam respectively▫Weigh about 27 tons each▫Twin bore design used to reduce space
Also magnetically couples the two beams•700,000 liters of liquid helium are used
for cooling (1.9K)•Base energy is 450 GeV and a couple
times a day they are accelerated to 7 TeV
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Beam Injection
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Detectors
•Could see up to 600 million collisions per second
•6 different detectors for different types of collisions▫LHCf
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ATLAS
•General purpose detector•Higgs particle•extra dimensions (could
explain weakness of gravity)?•Dark matter?•44m long, 25m in diameter•Weighs 7,000 tons•Most complex detector ever
built
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CMS•Also a general purpose
detector•Works with ATLAS to
detect the Higgs•Also looks for dark
matter (WIMPs)▫Weakly interacting
massive particles Also known as cold
dark matter
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ALICE•Studies quark-gluon
plasma that existed shortly after the big bang
•LHC is 100,000 hotter than center of sun▫Might be hot enough to
free quarks from within protons
•Will observe how the plasma cools and creates subatomic matter
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LHCb
•Will try to explain the asymmetry between matter and anti-matter▫There is much more
matter than antimatter•Will study the bottom
quark
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TOTEM
•440m long, 5m wide, 5m high•20 tons•Will be located inside the CMS detector•Size of proton•Beam luminosity
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Goals
•Understand the early universe better▫Ion collider will be particularly useful for
this•Find experiments to test the validity of
Grand Unified Theories, and possibly string theory
•Detect the predicted Higgs Boson▫Expected to exist at energies this machine
can reach
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Standard Model
•Is the current accepted model of particle physics
•Explains the interactions between strong, weak and electromagnetic forces
•Does not include gravity•Every predicted particle has been
detected except for the Higgs Boson
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Higgs Boson•Principle of Inertia
▫A body in motion will continue in the same motion given there is no applied force
•Where does mass come from?
•Theory suggests that inertia comes from the interaction of a body with some resistive field
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Higgs (cont.)
•The Higgs boson makes up this field
•LHC may produce a Higgs every hour▫Would take 3 years to
acquire enough data Requires many events
in order to statistically confirm its existence
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Test Run
•The LHC started up on September 10th at 4:27am sending a stream of protons around at 451 GeV
•There were no collisions – only one beam circulated
•On September 19th the LHC was shutdown for repairs
•Is expected to resume operations in spring 2009
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Problems with Test Run
•After 2 days of operation a transformer for the liquid helium failed and part of the tunnel warmed up▫Wasn’t reported for a week▫Took a week to cool that section back from
4.4 K to 2.1 K
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Problems (cont.)•A faulty electrical
connection between two magnets caused a helium leak▫Caused the collider to
be taken offline for the remainder of the year
•24 quadrupole and 8 dipole magnets were damaged
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LHC@Home
•There is a distributed computing client which has been working about a year
•Works to simulate protons circulating in the LHC▫Helps to develop a control sequence to
maintain proton containment Could cut into the magnets, taking the
accelerator offline
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Applications to Astronomy•Clearly the LHC is not a telescope• It does not make observations of the cosmos• It does allow us to experiment with incredibly
high energies, energies seen only in the first few seconds following the big bang
•Allows us to check validity of theories▫We use these theories to model the evolution of
the universe▫Also helps us describe high energy astrophysics
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Applications (cont.)• As mentioned
earlier the Higgs Boson is predicted to carry mass
• By better understanding gravity we can figure out why gravity is much weaker than any of the three other forces