Royal Holloway, University of London reaches particle physics milestone

Physicists at Royal Holloway, University of London are taking part in one of the largest physics experiments ever constructed. The ATLAS project is an international collaboration involving 34 countries, 150 universities and 2000 scientists and engineers. It will determine what happens when protons, accelerated to close to the speed of light, collide at higher energies than ever before observed. The experiment is being installed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an underground accelerator ring with 27 kilometres circumference at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva, Switzerland, and will begin operation in 2007.

The results of this experiment will lead to a better understanding of the fundamental nature of matter and the forces that make up our universe and may reveal yet-undiscovered fundamental particles, such as the Higgs particle (which endows fundamental particles with mass) or a whole family of so-called supersymmetric particles.

The complex ATLAS particle detector will be the size of a five storey building and will observe 40 million collisions per second. The interesting collisions containing a new particle are expected to be as rare as the proverbial needle in the haystack. The experiment is therefore equipped with a very selective "trigger" system that makes split-second decisions as to which collisions to record for later analysis, and which to reject outright.

In May 2006,the RHUL group crossed a major milestone of its involvement in the ATLAS trigger system: a consignment of 350 sophisticated electronics cards designed, developed and prototyped at RHUL (in collaboration with German and Dutch colleagues) has now finished production in the UK and has been shipped to CERN, where it is undergoing extensive final tests before installation in the experiment.  A group of colleagues at the Rutherford Appleton Lab (UK) provided crucial support in the card production phase.

Dr Pedro Teixeira-Dias is working full time on this exciting project and comments: "A large team here at the RHUL Centre for Particle Physics has spent many years working on the construction phase of the experiment and on preparation for the analysis of the data. It is very exciting to be now fast approaching the day when we will finally start analysing real data."

For more information please visit the ATLAS experiment and the Royal Holloway ATLAS group web pages