THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER (LHC)

PRANJAL MAURYA

• The LHC is exactly what its name suggests - a large collider of hadrons. Strictly, LHC refers to the collider; a machine that deserves to be labelled ‘large’, it not only weighs more than 38,000 tonnes, but runs for 27km (16.5m) in a circular tunnel 100 metres beneath the Swiss/French border at Geneva.

What is LHC?

Source: http://lhc-milestones.web.cern.ch/LHC-Milestones/year2008-en.html

LHC from

above

Before going to HADRON we must understand

what is QUARK??

Let’s get to the basics…First….What is HADRON?

What is

QUARK?

Source : http://www.jlab.org/publications/12GeV/02.html

• Hadrons are particles which interact via strong interaction (“Hadro” is Greek root for “Strong”).

• Hadrons are made of either two or three quarks.

S.N. Bose

HADRON

Baryon Meson

3 Quarks 2 Quarks

e.g. Proton, neutron

e.g.. Muon, kaon

Odd half integral spin(fermions)

Zero or integral spin(BOSON)

What is

HADRON?

.

Why LHC?

The LHC is designed to accelerate sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light and then smash them together replicating conditions which is similar to those that existed a few moments after the Big Bang. In this way physicists hope to discover how the Universe evolved.

What happens in LHC experiment?

Source: http://atlas-service-enews.web.cern.ch/atlas-service-enews/2009/news_09/news_lhc-update.php

Source: LHC, The Guide, CERN

The Higgs is a hypothetical particle that gives mass to all other particles. It’s a subatomic particle long thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe.

What is HIGGS

BOSON?Peter Higgs

How the Higgs Mechanism Works ?

1. Numerous person chat quietly in a fairly crowded room.

2. A famous person enters the room causing a disturbance in the field.

3. Followers cluster and surround the famous one as this group of people forms a “massive object”.

• If the Higgs mechanism is real, we should see an extra massive particle (the Higgs boson).

• Massive particles can only produced with high energy particle colliders.

• We don’t quite know the mass of the Higgs particle, but the LHC energy is high enough to give us a definite answer!

• The Higgs boson explains why particles have mass — and in turn why we exist.

So LHC is built to find the Higgs boson predicament!

Finding the HIGGS

Controversy with

LHC • There had been much speculation that the LHC was unsafe

because it could produce black holes which could eventually grow to the point that they swallow up the Earth.

• Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of CERN, admitted that "micro black holes" may be created but he insisted this was safe as they are of very low energy and would decay almost immediately .

• So no microscopic black holes produced inside the LHC could generate a strong enough gravitational force to pull in surrounding matter.

• So there is no reason to believe that collisions inside the LHC are harmful.

(Source: LHC, The Guide, CERN)

CHF: In currencies this is abbreviation of Swiss franc. 1 Swiss franc = 1.02375 U.S. Dollars = 56.492109 Indian rupees

• The total project cost breaks down roughly as follows:

Cost of LHC

Red areas = countries involved

These are only countries officially involved with institutions. Many individual colleagues from additional countries working with CERN!

Contributing

Countries

• It is clear that the LHC has a very good chance to answer a lot of meaningful questions regarding physics and the nature of our universe.

• On 4 July 2012 in a seminar, experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti said “We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”

• The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for understanding of the universe.

Future Works

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ALICE_Detector.jpg

Source: http://www.slipperybrick.com/2006/12/barrel-toroid-superconducting-magnet-atlas-detector/

Source: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/large_hadron_collider/index.html

Text Sources:• Beiser, A., (2003), Concept of Modern Physics, the McGraw-Hill companies, 6th

edition.• LHC- The Guide, CERN.

Other Sources:• Guest Lecture on ‘Quest for the Higgs Boson’ by Kajari Mazumdar, TIFR, organised

by Mathematics and Physics Club, IIT, Powai August 8, 2012.• http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Welcome.html• http://berto-meister.blogspot.in/2012/04/strange-charm-song-about-quarks.html• http://www.slipperybrick.com/2006/12/barrel-toroid-superconducting-magnet-

atlas-detector/• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atlas_detector_CERN_feb2007.jpg• http://lhc-milestones.web.cern.ch/LHC-Milestones/year2008-en.html• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Construction_of_LHC_at_CERN.jpg

References

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