Collaborating on the ZEUS detector

14 October 1998

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Many modern experiments in particle physics involve large complex detectors, built by teams of physicists who come together from all over the world to collaborate on the experiments. This week's image shows the partially assembled ZEUS detector at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, back in 1989. More than 400 physicists from 52 institutions in 12 countries are involved with ZEUS - about half of them are seen here.The photograph shows the orange faces of the iron that contains the magnetic field generated by the superconducting coil, which is visible end-on as the small circle at the centre. The Central Tracking Detector (CTD) was later installed within this magnet coil.

ZEUS is one of two major detectors that detect head-on collisions between bunches of high energy particles travelling in opposite directions around the Hadron Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA) at DESY. In 1992 and 1993 HERA was used to study the collisions between high energy electrons and protons, but for the next four years, the electrons were replaced by positrons (antielectrons). In August 1998, HERA began to run again with electrons, so that ZEUS can once more study electron-proton collisions.

Credit: DESY/ZEUS

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