LHC Update

Posted on July 7, 2008 by woit

Latest press release from CERN about the LHC says first beams “currently scheduled for August”. According to a presentation at the July 2 meeting of the LHC Technical Committee, the latest news is that “circulating beam not before September” (the presentation includes a detailed version of the schedule of what has to take place between now and the end of August). At this point the second to last sector is just about cool, the final one will take another two weeks. The last of 470 trucks of liquid nitrogen has arrived. Assuming it will take 1-2 months from first circulating beam until physics collisions, it looks like time for data-taking will be rather short before the shutdown for the winter.

This entry was posted in Experimental HEP News. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to LHC Update

  1. A quantum diaries survivor says:
    July 7, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    Hi Peter,

    indeed, I think we will be lucky if we get 20 inverse picobarns of data. And, at 10 TeV. The difference between 10 and 14 TeV is significant for the discovery of high-mass bodies.

    However, let me keep the enthusiasm up -finding for once my well-concealed vein of optimism. If we look back at the Tevatron, it took data in 1987-88 with no silicon detector in CDF, and triggered 4/pb of data. Those data were amazingly interesting! They kept us busy for the following four years! Here is a sample of publications from that period:

    – Measurement of mass and width of the Z (still competitive back then)
    – Measurement of W asymmetry (a first)
    – Inclusive jet cross section (ranging 9 orders of magnitude)
    – (then best) measurement of the W boson mass
    – inclusive J/psi, Psi(2S) production (showing disagreements with theory of up to two orders of magnitude!)
    – lower limits on top quark mass (up to 91 GeV)

    A total of more than 50 papers thick-rich with new amazing stuff.

    Plus, let’s not forget, the very first top-antitop candidate was seen back then -and it created in fact a huge controversy (ask Tony for the details).

    So, are we going to be disappointed with the amount of data ? Yes. Are we going to be amazed by it ? YES!

    Cheers,
    T.

Comments are closed.