Worlds collide: Â鶹ÊÓƵ experts to help upgrade Large Hadron Collider experiment
Credit: Brice, Maximilien: CERN
Â鶹ÊÓƵ scientists are to work on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, as they help to upgrade one of its experiments.
Famous for the discovery of the Higgs Boson in July 2012, the LHC, based at CERN, accelerates two high-energy particle beams travel to close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. Four particle detectors then gather information that is used to identify subatomic particles that result from the collision.
Scientists from Leicester’s School of Physics and Astronomy will join the team working on the next upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment, the first time that Â鶹ÊÓƵ staff will work on instrumentation for the collider. This series of sub-detectors looks for particles containing the beauty or b quark, to help physicists study the Standard model, the established theory of particle physics.
The Â鶹ÊÓƵ is joining a consortium of 10 other UK universities, as well as Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), working on LHCb. The news comes as the University marks 100 years of Physics at Leicester.
The Leicester team, led by Professor Jon Lapington, will be helping to develop and construct the TORCH detector for the LHCb experiment. TORCH’s operating principle is based on the detection of Cherenkov radiation, a field in which Leicester already has a significant track record. Among the projects that Professor Lapington’s team is currently working on is the camera for the Small-Sized Telescope of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, which conducts very high-energy gamma-ray astronomy by imaging atmospheric Cherenkov radiation.
Professor Lapington, from the Â鶹ÊÓƵ School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “This is an exciting time to be joining CERN with the LHCb upgrade for the High Luminosity LHC on the horizon, and the Detector R&D Programme gearing up to develop the technologies for the future European particle physics programme, including the Future Circular Collider.”
The team will mainly be focusing on a detector called TORCH, a Cherenkov-based particle identification detector that is used to discriminate between protons, pions and kaons, types of particles produced during a collision in the LHC.
The TORCH detector utilises Cherenkov radiation, which is produced when charged particles are travelling faster than light in a transparent medium such as water or quartz. TORCH uses a wall of quartz plates to intercept particles produced from the LHCb beam collision, and by timing and imaging the Cherenkov radiation from them, scientists can identify the particles produced.
This isn’t the first time that the scientists have collaborated with CERN. Professor Lapington has also worked with their Microelectronics group to develop a camera for high content biological analysis using electronics developed for the LHC ALICE experiment.
Professor Lapington is also leading a work package to develop time-of-flight detectors in the CERN-hosted Detector Research & Development programme (DRD), which aims to serve the needs of the future particle physics experimental programme to develop technologies required for the next generation of colliders.