Thursday, October 28, 2010, 16:00
WHGA Auditorium
J. Virdee, Imperial College
Abstract:
The LHC accelerator is colliding protons at unprecedented high energies and performing well.
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is also performing well, close to the ambitious design performance set down some fifteen years ago. As the amount of recorded data increase measurements are confronting, more and more precisely, the predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics, whilst looking for new physics. CMS is well set to make widely expected ground-breaking discoveries. Potential discoveries include new forces of nature, new dimensions and new states of matter.
The LHC accelerator and its detectors arguably are marvels of technology. CMS, one of the two large general-purpose experiments, is an order of magnitude larger and more complex than previous generation of particle physics experiments. It is designed to operate in a very harsh environment created by hundreds of billions of particles produced every second, and to register with high accuracy the passage and energies of all these particles, thus demanding huge data collection, transfer and processing rates on a scale greater than ever previously attempted. CMS comprises over 3000 scientists and engineers from over 180 institutions in 38 countries.
The colloquium will recall the physics potential of the LHC, outline some of the challenges faced in the construction of CMS, its operation and performance, the first physics results from CMS and the outlook.