The superconducting way to LEP's highest energies

3 June 1998

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The world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP), is running in 1998 at higher energies than ever before. The machine, which is at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva, collides high energy beams of electrons and their antiparticles, positrons. Like many other particles accelerators, LEP uses electromagnetic waves (radiowaves) to increase the energy of the particles on each circuit of the circular machine. The particles encounter these waves as they pass through structures known as "radiofrequency (RF) cavities". To allow LEP to reach higher energies, new superconducting cavities have been installed. These make use of the phenomenon of superconductivity to provide more acceleration than ordinary copper cavities, while using less electricity. This image shows a superconducting cavity installed in the LEP tunnel near the experiment known as L3.

(The LEP collider was shut down to make way for a new machine, the LHC, in November 2000.)

Credit: CERN Photo

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