Atlas cryostat approaches CERN

11 July 2001

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Earlier this month, a large key component for the ATLAS detector arrived at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, near Geneva. The trailer (seen here at the 1323-m Col de la Faucille just before the descent to CERN) carries a cryostat - essentially a huge Thermos flask! - that has travelled from Kobe in Japan, via a journey of 46 days by sea, canal and road. The cryostat will contain the electromagnetic calorimeter - the part of ATLAS that will absorb the energies of all electrons and photons. The electromagnetic calorimeter will consist of thin lead plates immersed in liquid argon - the lead to make showers of electrons and positrons from an initial individual electron, positron or photon, and the argon to sense the tracks of the electrons and positrons in the showers. The cryostat is needed to keep the argon liquid at a temperature of 90 K. You can see what the cryostat looks like here. ATLAS is a huge new detector being built to study collisions at the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC), due to start up at CERN in 2006.

Credit: CERN
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