The ins and outs of a magnet for the LHC
14 July 1999
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is being built at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, will collide proton beams head on at higher energies than ever before. The particle beams will travel millions of times round the 27-km circular tunnel that currently houses the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider. To achieve high intensities as well as high energies, the LHC is will collide protons with protons, rather than protons with antiprotons as is done at Fermilab in the US. The LHC is therefore being built as two proton accelerators in one - with the oppositely-directed protons being guided round by the same superconducting electromagnets. This cut-away diagram shows some of the complexity of the resulting magnet design. The two pipes for the proton beams can be seen towards the centre-left. The complete structure is housed in a huge cryostat - a "vacuum flask" - to maintain the very low temperatures needed for superconducting operation.
Credit: CERN Photo
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