Geneva, 30 March 2010, Collisions at 7TeV!

Beams collided at 7 TeV in the LHC at 13:06  CEST today, marking the start of the LHC research programme. Particle physicists around the world are looking forward to a potentially rich harvest of new physics as the LHC begins its first long run at an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator.

Geneva, 3 February 2010, New schedule :

The most important news of last week is to run the LHC for 18 to 24 months at a collision energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam). After that, LHC will go into a long shutdown in which all the necessary work will be done to reach the LHC’s design collision energy of 14 TeV for the next run. This means that when the beams go back into the LHC later this month, the longest phase of accelerator operation in CERN’s history, is scheduled to take us into summer or autumn 2011.

Geneva, 18 December 2009, LHC ends 2009 run :
Over the last two weeks, the six LHC experiments have recorded over a million particle collisions, which have been distributed smoothly for analysis around the world on the LHC computing grid. The LHC has now been put into standby mode, and will restart in February 2010 following a short technical stop to prepare for higher energy collisions and the start of the main research programme. A technical stop is needed to prepare the LHC for higher energy running in 2010.Geneva, 6 December 2009: Data taking with all detectors, some nice events

Geneva, 1 December 2009: First ALICE paper has been accepted by EPJC for publication

Geneva, 30 November 2009: LHC sets new world record

Utrecht, 26-11-2009: LHC restart – (First_collisions movie in mp4, avi, wmv)

Utrecht, 26-11-2009: Utrecht research group celebrates the measurement of first collisions
On Nov. 23 the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European particle physics laboratory CERN in Geneva circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time. This is an extraordinary success after the long shutdown period of the accelerator, which had become necessary after an accident in September 2008.
In the afternoon, the experiments already observed the first collisions of protons from both beams. Among these, the ALICE experiment, which has a strong contribution from the Institute for Subatomic Physics of the Science Faculty of Utrecht University, registered its first event. Within seconds, an early analysis of this event was performed, as demonstrated from the online display shown below. Within less than an hour ≈300 collisions were measured by ALICE in this first attempt. The accelerator is performing extremely well and gives confidence in a further smooth restart phase. Also the ALICE experiment, and with it the Silicon Strip Detector constructed at Utrecht University in cooperation with Nikhef, Amsterdam, has once again demonstrated excellent performance.Figure: Online display of the first proton-proton collisions registered with the ALICE experiment. Particle tracks are reconstructed in the silicon detectors of the Inner Tracking System (ITS). A crucial element of this detector is the Silicon Strip Detector, which constitutes the 2.6 million detector elements of the two outer layers of the ITS and which has been constructed at Utrecht University.

The first collisions take place at an energy of 900 GeV, which is low compared to the ultimate goal of the LHC and will not allow to study new physics. The major purpose is to understand the accelerator and to allow to calibrate the detectors with well-understood reactions. In the following weeks the accelerator will be commissioned, and the energy will slowly be ramped up. The plan is to reach by Christmas a total energy of 2.4 TeV, which would then set the world energy record for a particle accelerator.

Geneva, 20 November 2009: The LHC is back!
Particle beams are once again circulating in the world's most powerful particle accelerator, CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This news comes after the machine was handed over for operation on Wednesday morning. A clockwise circulating beam was established at ten o'clock this evening.