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Prospecting for Gold: Particle Detectors

BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007. David Barney, CERN. What does a particle detector need to do?. Need to determine:What particles do we see?Where did they come from and where do they go?What were their energies and momenta?In order to understand:What happened in a collision bet

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Prospecting for Gold: Particle Detectors

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    1. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN Prospecting for Gold: Particle Detectors What does a particle detector need to do? The first particle detectors The unique challenges of modern detectors Rising to the challenge - let’s design a detector! The LHC detectors and components What might physicists get excited about in a few years from now?

    2. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN What does a particle detector need to do? Need to determine: What particles do we see? Where did they come from and where do they go? What were their energies and momenta? In order to understand: What happened in a collision between particles? Has something interesting been created? Sometimes the “interesting” things decay to lighter (stable) particles Need to focus on the stable particles and be “detectives” – work out what happened from the evidence left behind

    3. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The first particle detectors

    4. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The first particle detectors

    5. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The first particle detectors

    6. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The challenges of modern detectors We don’t really know what we are looking for! The “interesting” things we are looking for are very rare Need to make millions of collisions every second!

    7. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The challenges of modern detectors Each collision produces many hundreds of particles The energies/momenta of the particles involved are huge The detectors are very complex and have many layers They also need to be big!

    8. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN A “simple” collision at LHC (simulation)

    9. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN Let’s add a magnetic field!

    10. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN A typical detector for the LHC #1

    11. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN Let’s design a detector #1 Start with a BIG and powerful magnet!

    12. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The “Gothic Cathedrals of the 21st Century”

    13. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN A basic “Tracker”

    14. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN CMS Tracker

    15. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN Let’s design a detector #2 Calorimeters – to measure the energies of different types of particle Electromagnetic – sensitive to photons, electrons, positrons Hadronic – sensitive to “hadrons” (particles containing quarks) such as protons, neutrons, pions etc. The calorimeters “stop” the incoming particles so must go outside of the “tracker”

    16. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN A basic calorimeter

    17. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN ATLAS tile calorimeter

    18. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter Crystals

    19. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN Let’s design a detector #3 Need to identify the different types of particle Combination of signals in the tracker and calorimeters can identify many particles Also have dedicated sensors for muons These are the only particles that travel all the way through the calorimeters without stopping

    20. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN A typical detector for the LHC #2

    21. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN A typical detector for the LHC #3

    22. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The two giant detectors for the LHC

    23. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The “Gothic Cathedrals of the 21st Century”

    24. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The “Gothic Cathedrals of the 21st Century”

    25. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The “Gothic Cathedrals of the 21st Century”

    26. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN In the CMS cavern #1

    27. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN In the CMS Cavern #2

    28. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN What might a real Higgs event look like?

    29. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN The physicist’s gold!

    30. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN Some final thoughts on the technology The LHC detectors are the most complex scientific instruments ever made A typical LHC detector has about 100 million individual sensors (c.f. a typical digital camera with ~6 Mpixels) But it takes a “digital photo” 40 million times every second! The detectors have to operate for at least ten years with little or no intervention Technology – sensors and electronics – are cutting-edge

    31. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN People CMS and ATLAS have about 2500 collaborators each, including more than 1000 students! They come from all over the world - about 80 countries We have been working on these detectors for the past ~15 years – and they haven’t even started operation yet!

    32. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN A mini black-hole produced in ATLAS

    33. BA Festival of Science, York, 14th September 2007 David Barney, CERN From “EVO” magazine Oct 07 “It’s rather like the Large Hadron Collider, the new giant particle accelerator about to be fired up in Switzerland. Size really does matter. The bigger the bang, the more exciting the result.”

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