How long is the particle accelerator

Colliders are accelerators that generate head-on collisions between particles. Thanks to this technique, the collision energy is higher because the energy of the two particles is added together.

The Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most powerful collider in the world. It boosts the particles in a loop 27 kilometres in circumference at an energy of 6. The type of particles, the energy of the collisions and the luminosity are among the important characteristics of an accelerator.

An accelerator can circulate a lot of different particles, provided that they have an electric charge so that they can be accelerated with an electromagnetic field. The CERN accelerator complex accelerates protons, but also nuclei of ionized atoms ions , such as the nuclei of lead, argon or xenon atoms.

Some LHC runs are thus dedicated to lead-ion collisions. The energy of a particle is measured in electronvolts.

One electronvolt is the energy gained by an electron that accelerates through a one-volt electrical field. As they race around the LHC, the protons acquire an energy of 6.

It is the highest energy reached by an accelerator, but in everyday terms, this is a ridiculously tiny energy; roughly the energy of a safety pin dropped from a height of just two centimetres. But an accelerator concentrates that energy at the infinitesimal scale to obtain very high concentrations of energy close to those that existed just after the Big Bang.

The instantaneous luminosity is expressed in cm -2 s -1 and the integrated luminosity, corresponding to the number of collisions that can occur over a given period, is measured in inverse femtobarn. One inverse femtobarn corresponds to million millions potential collisions. CERN operates a complex of eight accelerators and two decelerators.

These accelerators supply experiments or are used as injectors, accelerating particles for larger accelerators. Some, such as the Proton Synchrotron PS or Super Proton Synchrotron SPS do both at once, preparing particles for experiments that they supply directly and injecting into larger accelerators. The Large Hadron Collider is supplied with protons by a chain of four accelerators that boost the particles and divide them into bunches.

Imagining, developing and building an accelerator takes several decades. For example, the former LEP electron-positron accelerator had not even begun operation when CERN scientists were already imagining replacing it with a more powerful accelerator.

That was in , twenty-four years before the LHC started. Work is also being done on alternative acceleration techniques for example with the AWAKE experiment. Many accelerators developed several decades ago are still in operation. These waves within plasmas are very small sub-millimetre and very powerful, which is what allows the overall accelerator to be extremely small.

Plasma-based particle accelerators like ours will need times less space than existing designs, reducing the space required for installation from xm to just 40x40m. The hardware needed to build our accelerator is cheaper to install, run and maintain.

Overall, we expect our plasma accelerator to reduce the cost of installing an accelerator in a hospital by a factor of ten.

Besides these two advantages, our accelerator can perform certain new functions that existing accelerators cannot. For instance, plasma-based accelerators can provide detailed X-rays of biological samples with far greater clarity than those that exist today.

By providing a better image of the inside of a human body, this could help doctors find cancer at a much earlier stage, dramatically increasing the chance of successfully treating the illness. The same ultra-high resolution imaging can also help spot the early signs of cracks and defects on machinery, at nanometer scale.

Their early detection by our accelerator could help extend the lifetime of high-precision, high-quality components in heavy industry and manufacturing. The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures is assessing the design report, with a decision expected in summer If successful, construction of the first two prototypes is expected to be completed by , with access to external users to be granted immediately after.

Several years of interdisciplinary research were needed for us to form the first detailed and realistic design of a machine of this kind. Our plasma accelerator is the most recent example of how obscure, abstract, fundamental physics can enter into our everyday lives — cutting research costs, improving manufacturing and helping to save lives.

Just prior to collision, another type of magnet is used to "squeeze" the particles closer together to increase the chances of collisions. The particles are so tiny that the task of making them collide is akin to firing two needles 10 kilometres apart with such precision that they meet halfway. All the controls for the accelerator, its services and technical infrastructure are housed under one roof at the CERN Control Centre.

LHC Facts and Figures. The Safety of the LHC.