LHC Starts Research
According to a CERN news release, the laboratory plans to run the LHC for 18-24 months, with the objective of delivering enough data to the experiments to make significant advances across a wide range of physics channels. As soon as they have "re-discovered" the known Standard Model particles, the LHC experiments will start the systematic search for the Higgs boson.
The Higgs boson is predicted by the Standard Model. Its discovery could explain the origin of mass.
The LHC lies at the high-energy frontier of particle physics, supplanting Fermilab's Tevatron last fall, which had long held that title. The Tevatron is still operating and has a chance to produce and detect the Higgs before the LHC, but that opportunity will fade as the LHC ramps up its proton beams to higher and higher energies, eventually topping out at 7 TeV each.
"This is our sister lab - it's success is our success," said Andrew Hutton, the associate director for Jefferson Lab's Accelerator Division. He added that the discovery potential for the LHC is just as exciting to the community of nuclear physicists, such as Jefferson Lab's scientists and Users, as it is to high-energy particle physicists.
"The LHC and most proton machines are considered to be discovery machines. But the electron machines that tend to follow them are the ones that really elucidate the details," Hutton said. "The reason why people are proposing an International Linear Collider is because people think that the LHC will see something interesting,"
For more on the LHC, see the CERN news release.
To learn about the role the U.S. has at LHC, click here.
Photos: CERN