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UO physicists celebrate milestone in collider construction
Final piece of powerful particle detector is lowered into Swiss facility -- a new world of research awaits scientific inquiry
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| Image above shows the installation of the first of two "small wheels" placed into the Large Hadron Collider project in Geneva | |
| Photo courtesy of the ATLAS Collaboration |
EUGENE, Ore. -- (Feb. 29, 2008) -- Four University of Oregon physicists and their postdoctoral researchers and students are among scientists worldwide who today are celebrating a milestone in the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Early today, the last piece of the ATLAS particle detector -- the second of two "small wheels" measuring about 30 feet in diameter and weighing 100 tons -- was placed into the underground collision hall at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The LHC, when completed, will be the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. The wheels are covered with sensitive detectors that will be used to identify and measure the momentum of subatomic particles called muons that are created in collisions.
UO faculty members are Jim Brau, Eric Torrence, David Strom and Ray Frey, all of whom study particle physics at the UO Center for High Energy Physics. They belong to the 2,100-member U.S. ATLAS collaboration based at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. The collaboration team includes about 420 physicists, engineers and graduate students from 38 universities and four national laboratories. All are supported by the DOE and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Experiments at the LHC will allow physicists to take a big leap in their exploration of the universe. The ATLAS detector may help to unravel some of the deepest mysteries in particle physics such as the origin of mass or the identification of dark matter. The ATLAS collaboration will now focus on commissioning the detector in preparation for the start-up of the LHC this summer.
“We are pursuing this research in order to explore the energy frontier of particle physics, in search of the missing elements of the Standard Model of particles, and expecting to find evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model,” said Brau, the Knight Professor of Natural Science at the University of Oregon. “Specifically, we expect to find the elusive Higgs boson, begin a study of its properties, and search for the elements of Dark Matter ‘seen’ in astrophysical measurements.
“The electromagnetic and nuclear weak forces are known to be related in the Standard Model. However, in everyday life they appear to be very different, which is why this unification was unrealized for many years,” he said. “Much of the difference in the appearance of these forces results from the different masses of the field particles which create the forces. In the case of the electromagnetic force, the field particle is the photon, and it is massless. In the case of the weak nuclear force, the field particles are the W and Z bosons, and they are very massive. Why? We think the Higgs particle is responsible for this difference, in that it gives mass to the W and Z, while leaving the photon massless. When the Higgs is discovered, we will be able to test this model, and probe beyond.”
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon's flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of 62 of the leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. Membership in the AAU is by invitation only. The University of Oregon is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.
Editor’s note: To view the main U.S. news release issued by the Brookhaven National Laboratory, click here. Also available: Photos and video.
Contacts: Jim Barlow, 541-346-3481, jebarlow@uoregon.edu; CERN – Katie McAlpine, +41 76 487 0004, katie.mcalpine@cern.ch; CERN – James Gillies, +41 22 76 741 01, james.gillies@cern.ch; or Brookhaven – Kendra Snyder, 631-344-8191, ksnyder@bnl.gov
University of Oregon source: Jim Brau, professor of physics and Knight Professor of Natural Science, 541- 346-4766, jimbrau@uoregon.edu