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Updated: daily
- LHCb investigates the properties of one of physics’ most puzzling particlesLHCb investigates the properties of one of physics’ most puzzling particles The LHCb experiment. (Image: CERN) χc1(3872) is an intriguing particle. It was first discovered over 20 years ago in B+ meson decays by the BELLE collaboration, KEK, Japan. Since then, the LHCb collaboration reported it in 2010 and has measured some of its properties. But here’s the catch – physicists still don’t know what it is actually made up of. In the quark model of particle physics, there are baryons (made up of three quarks), mesons (made up of a quark–antiquark pair) and exotic particles (made up of an unconventional number of quarks). To find out what χc1(3872) consists of, physicists must measure its properties, such as its mass or quantum number. Theories suggest that χc1(3872) could be a conventional charmonium state, made up of charm and anticharm quarks, or an exotic particle composed of four quarks. An exotic particle of this type could be a tightly bound tetraquark, a molecular state, a cc-…
- Digital archaeology: new LEP data now available to allDigital archaeology: new LEP data now available to all Unlike letters carved on the Rosetta stone, digital data is not written on a virtually immutable support. Just a few years after it is written, its format becomes obsolete, the readout analysis tools can’t run on computers and the visualisation code no longer works. But data can still contain interesting scientific information that should remain available to future generations of scientists. A set of data of potentially high interest is that of LEP, CERN’s former flagship accelerator that collided electrons and positrons up until 2000. Like the current LHC, LEP had four collision points, each hosting an experiment – ALEPH, DELPHI, OPAL and L3 – that was operated by hundreds of scientists. LEP holds the record for the world’s highest e+e- energy collisions but the data collected over two decades ago remains available to only a small community of people. Like archaeologists who unearth the remnants of past civilizations, digital arc…
- Accelerator Report: No summer holidays for the accelerator complexAccelerator Report: No summer holidays for the accelerator complex Since the technical stop in June, Linac4 has been running quite smoothly, delivering beam to the PS Booster with good availability, of 98.7%. Despite a small water leak from the cooling system in one of the PS Booster quadrupole magnets, beam availability remains high, at 94%. The leak, though small, is being carefully managed by diverting the water outside the magnet to prevent further issues. Continuous monitoring is in place, using a camera and data from the water-cooling station. As long as the leak does not worsen, operations will proceed as usual until the end of the 2024 run. If the leak increases significantly, a spare magnet is ready for installation, which would require a beam stop of several days. As mentioned in a previous Accelerator Report, physics at ISOLDE started on 8 April. Since then, approximately 20 different experimental runs have been conducted at the low-energy experimental stations, using vario…
- How can I use CERN’s Open Science Office?How can I use CERN’s Open Science Office? Why should I care about open science? The aim of open science is to make scientific research more accessible, transparent and efficient for the benefit of scientists and society. It includes making the products of research openly available – i.e. providing open access to research publications and sharing research data and open-source software and hardware – but also covers effecting cultural change in scientific processes to ensure that the production of knowledge is inclusive, sustainable and equitable. What does CERN’s Open Science Office do? The Open Science Office answers questions, provides guidance and connects the CERN community with experts and resources. It organises CERN open science governance meetings and plans to organise training courses and workshops in the future. It was created in 2023, following the release of CERN’s 2022 open science policy ,and will publish CERN’s first open science report in 2025. Why is open science impor…
- Computer Security: Don’t print nakedComputer Security: Don’t print naked If you’re interested in what’s going on at CERN, in professional projects and plans, or in private problems and parties, hanging out at one of CERN’s printers is a very effective approach (but, please… don’t!). Too many people are still printing confidential documents without caring that they might be read by third parties hanging around – see for example the image below of a document found on one of CERN’s printers a few years ago… This shouldn’t happen. Confidential documents, documents with sensitive content, personal information and private emails should be properly protected – even when they’re converted to paper format. The CERN printing infrastructure is capable of ensuring the confidentiality of your documents: you can send a print job in such a way that it won’t be printed until you input a PIN code at the machine. So the next time you need to print such a document, go to “Printer Properties” (1) and select the “Secure Print” outp…
- Less hungry magnets for the experiments of the futureLess hungry magnets for the experiments of the future How can we advance cutting-edge research but consume less energy? CERN’s scientists are working on innovative solutions, and superconductivity is one of the key ingredients. A team has recently successfully tested a demonstrator magnet coil that will significantly reduce the power consumption of certain experiments. The coil is made of magnesium diboride (MgB2) superconducting cables, which are used in the high-intensity electrical transfer line that will power the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), the successor to the LHC. It is mounted in a low-carbon steel magnetic yoke that holds and concentrates the field lines, in a so-called superferric configuration. This innovative magnet is intended for the SHiP experiment, which is designed to detect very weakly interacting particles and is scheduled to be commissioned in 2031. One of the detector’s two magnets must produce a field of approximately 0.5 tesla. The field is of mode…
- LHCb investigates the rare Σ+→pμ+μ- decayLHCb investigates the rare Σ+→pμ+μ- decay The LHCb collaboration reported the observation of the hyperon Σ+→pμ+μ- rare decay at the XV International Conference on Beauty, Charm, Hyperons in Hadronic Interactions (BEACH 2024) in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. A hyperon is a particle containing three quarks, like the proton and neutron, including one or more strange quarks. Rare decays of known particles are a promising tool for searching for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. In the SM, the Σ+→pμ+μ- process is only possible through “loop diagrams”: rather than the decay happening directly, intermediate states need to be exchanged in a “loop”, as illustrated in diagrams (a) and (b) below. In quantum field theory, the probability of such a process occurring is the sum of the probabilities of all possible particles exchanged in this loop, both known and unknown. This is what makes such a process sensitive to new phenomena. If a discrepancy be…
- New beam dumps: cut along the dotted lineNew beam dumps: cut along the dotted line When particle beams circulating in the LHC need to be stopped, they are directed towards the beam dumps. In 2020, during Long Shutdown 2, the main LHC beam dumps, which had been in place in the accelerator from the start, were replaced by spare dumps – themselves heavily modified with respect to the original design – because they were showing signs of wear and tear. To withstand the onslaught of the current run, Run 3, these spares had been upgraded before being installed as the main beam dumps. They are still in place today and operating successfully. The autopsies carried out on the first beam dumps highlighted their strengths and weaknesses. Those findings, coupled with additional studies carried out at HiRadMat, led to a strategy for designing new spare beam dumps and the future HL-LHC beam dumps. A tried and tested recipe Originally, the beam dumps were made of three main materials: blocks of high-density graphite and discs of low-density…
