The UNIQA office at CERN (Main Building) will be closed during the two-week end-of-year closure of the Laboratory.

However, during that period, the UNIQA Geneva officeswill be open on 24 as well as 26 to 28 December 2018, and 1 to 4 January 2019 from 8 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. and from 1.30 p.m. to 5 p.m. (4 p.m. on 24 December 2018). During these hours, you can also call +41 22 718 63 00.

For urgent medical assistance, you may call UNIQA Assistance +41 22 819 44 77, 24h/day during the whole period. Please note that this service only provides medical advice and urgent assistance services and is not in a position to inform you on the coverage by CHIS of medical expenses.

Monday 7 January
Thursday 7 February
Thursday 7 March
Monday 8 April
Tuesday 7 May
Friday 7 June
Monday 8 July
Wednesday 7 August
Friday 6 September
Monday 7 October
Thursday 7 November
Friday 6 December

CERN Pension Fund

The CERN accelerator complex is being switched off step-by-step in order to prepare for Long Shutdown 2 (LS2). On 12 November, all protons were stopped in the LHC and throughout the accelerator complex. On Monday, 3 December, the LHC lead-ion run ended and, finally, on Monday, 10 December, the lead ions for fixed target physics were also stopped, signalling the start of LS2.

In view of the restart of the LHC in 2021 possibly at 7 TeV instead of 6.5 TeV per beam, a magnet test and training campaign was scheduled last week. The aim of this test campaign was to get a better idea of how long it takes and how many training quenches are required to train all the superconducting magnets in the LHC so that they can sustain the magnetic field required to collide the beam at 7 TeV per beam. For the dipole magnets, this field corresponds to 8.33 Tesla. Arc 1-2, approximately 3 km of the machine connecting Point 1 (ATLAS) with Point 2 (ALICE), was chosen for this campaign. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm in the evening of Monday, 3 December caused a major power cut at CERN, delaying this magnet test campaign by two days. To make up for this lost time the test campaign has been extended from Monday morning 10 December at 6 am to Wednesday 12 December at 6 am.

Looking back on 2018, one can only conclude that it was a successful year. The target integrated luminosity of 60 fb^-1 for the ATLAS and CMS proton run was reached, and even exceeded by 10%, resulting in a total integrated luminosity during Run 2 (2015 – 2018) of 160 fb^-1, and of 189 fb^-1 since the start of LHC physics. The integrated luminosities for the proton run of LHCb and ALICE, for which luminosity levelling is applied, were 2.5 fb^-1 and 27.3 pb^-1 respectively. The fourth lead-ion run since the start of the LHC was challenging, but, here again, the goals were reached: 1.8 nb^-1 was integrated for each of ATLAS and CMS, 0.9 nb^-1 for ALICE and 0.24 fb^-1 for LHCb.

In addition, important steps have been made towards the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC): during re-commissioning in April, the new Achromatic Telescopic Squeezing (ATS) optics, developed for the HL-LHC, were deployed, allowing for smaller β* and hence higher peak luminosities. The value for β* at ATLAS and CMS in the LHC design report was 80 cm, while in 2018 the LHC ran with a β* of 30 cm and at the end of each fill even 25 cm. For the HL-LHC, a β* of 15 cm or even 10 cm is planned.

In addition to the techniques of levelling through beam separation, used for ALICE and LHCb, and the change of crossing angle, which were both deployed in previous years, levelling through β* was deployed operationally in 2018. The purpose of this type of levelling is that, at the start of collisions, when the peak luminosity is too high for the experiments, the beam size is increased while, later, when the beam density or brightness decreases due to the collisions, the beam size is reduced. All these techniques aim at reducing, in a controlled manner, the cross section of the beam encounters and limiting the pile-up of physics events in the detectors.

The re-commissioning of the machine and beam were remarkable in 2018. The initial schedule, based on past experience, allowed five weeks from first beam in the machine to physics with 1200 bunches per beam, which is when luminosity production starts to become significant. Thanks to the high machine availability during this period, 1200 bunches per beam were reached on 28 April. Collisions with the full machine – 2556 bunches per beam – were established on 5 May, thirteen days ahead of schedule.

In 2017, the LHC performance was hampered by the so-called 16L2 issue: frozen air in an interconnection between magnets in the arc connecting Point 1 (ATLAS) with Point 2 (ALICE). Despite the work carried out during the Year End Technical Stop, when the arc was warmed up to 100 K, not all the gas had been eliminated and, in 2018, the beam was dumped several times due to losses induced by the remaining, probably minuscule, amount of ice in 16L2. Fortunately, this allowed running with Bunch Compression, Merging and Splitting (BCMS) beam instead of the 8b4e (8 bunches and 4 empty buckets) beam that was used in 2017. However, to avoid these 16L2-induced dumps, the bunch intensity was not pushed beyond 1.15 × 10¹¹ protons, the design value for the LHC bunch intensity.

Preliminary analysis of the 2018 availability statistics shows that 49% of the time, beams were colliding and luminosity was being produced. Equipment failures and other faults account for 24% of the time, while the remainder, 26%, was spent on “operation”, i.e. recovering from beam dumps, preparing the machine, injecting, accelerating, squeezing and adjusting the beams.

The entire accelerator complex is now in shutdown. The majority of the LHC helium inventory will be moved to the surface before the Christmas break and, as of January, people rather than particles will be running around the machine to perform all the planned maintenance and upgrade activities to prepare the machine for Run 3.

On 3 December, the LHC’s second run came to an end after three fantastic years. Over the course of Run 2, our flagship machine truly came of age. The LHC accelerator, detectors and computing all performed with metronomic reliability, while demonstrating great versatility through a number of special runs. As well as running with protons and lead ions, the LHC also collided xenon ions to provide an extra data point in the quest to understand the mysteries of Quark Gluon Plasma. At Point 8, it became a fixed target machine with a neon gas jet target in the beam pipe, allowing LHCb to collect proton-proton collider data at the same time as proton-neon fixed-target data. The proton-neon data allow nuclear effects in particle production processes to be studied, and enable LHCb physicists to look into the physics of cosmic ray proton collisions with gas atoms in the upper atmosphere.

There were also runs with protons on protons, protons on lead, and lead on lead, some with seemingly curious centre of mass nucleon-nucleon collision energies tuned to, for example, 5.02 TeV. These were designed to make a bridge between the Run 1 and Run 2 heavy-ion data sets, as well to allow comparisons between data from the three types of collisions. In Run 2, it’s also worth noting that all four experiments took data with heavy ions: adding new analyses to their portfolios is a sure sign of maturity, and strengthens the overall reach of the LHC physics programme.

The landmark Higgs boson discovery in Run 1 presented us with a wonderfully rich and diverse physics programme. In Run 2 we learned a lot more about the Higgs boson, notably how it couples to the heaviest, third generation of quarks and leptons, thus establishing the Yukawa coupling as a separate term in the Lagrangian of the Standard Model – more familiar to many as the formula proudly displayed on T-shirts sold at the CERN shop! The coupling to top quarks was a particular bonus: measuring it was not expected to be within the reach of the LHC experiments until much more data had been recorded. The fact that the Higgs to top quark coupling has been measured already is testimony to the great progress the experiments have made in refining their analysis techniques.

Thanks to Run 2, we now know the masses of the Higgs boson, top quark and W boson to considerably greater precision. Such measurements are important for constraining the Standard Model as a stable theory. Our understanding of CP-violation emerges from Run 2 with much improved measurements of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. The quantity of data collected means that teams will be busy throughout the long shutdown analysing it. There could be exciting results in store if early hints turn out to be more than a statistical fluke. Flavour physics, for example, looks at rare transitions between generations of particles, and there’s enough data that subtle effects might be seen. With direct searches for new physics still revealing nothing new, the road to physics beyond the Standard Model may emerge through measurements such as these.

It was not just the big LHC experiments that produced exciting results in Run 2, the forward experiments also had important contributions to make. They took us back to an earlier era, when CERN was in its infancy and high in the lexicon of particle physics students were words like pomeron, coined in the early 1960s, and odderon, in the late 1970s. These hypothetical particles, later considered to be composed of an even or odd number of temporarily associating gluons, were put forward to describe elastic scattering. While the precision LHC measurement is not hard proof, it’s strong evidence that the odderon model bears some truth.

The many facets of LHC physics, including all that was revealed in Run 2, explain the beauty of the LHC, but without accelerator physics at an advanced level, none of it would be possible. With the LHC running so well, it is easy to forget what a complex beast it is, and what a triumph of human ingenuity. As well as running smoothly at 13 TeV, delivering a greater harvest in terms of luminosity than the ambitious target we had set ourselves, the LHC juggled with custom particle combinations, and fine-tuned energies. All in all, it has firmly established itself as a remarkably versatile instrument.

There was a very poignant moment as Run 2 came to an end and the venerable Linac 2 delivered its final protons destined for the LHC. Linac 2 has been faithfully providing beams for all proton experiments at CERN since 1978. It has been the lynchpin of the proton injector chain. Without its remarkable performance, along with the equally remarkable performance of the whole of the LHC injector chain, the LHC would not have achieved all it did in Run 2.

Run 2 has advanced our knowledge hugely, and left us at the beginning of the long shutdown with one inescapable conclusion. The physics harvest to date underscores more than ever the need for the High-Luminosity LHC, and for the full design energy of 14 TeV. The upcoming long shutdown, LS2, is the shutdown for the LHC Injectors Upgrade, LIU, project. All the careful preparations to replace Linac 2 with Linac 4, along with upgrades throughout the whole chain from the particle sources, for both protons and ions, through the Booster, the PS and the SPS, will come to fruition over the next two years. It’s going to be a busy shutdown as we prepare for the future, but we are already looking forward to the next instalment as Run 3 gets underway in 2021.

The sixth ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb Career Networking Event took place on 12 November 2018, offering an insight into career opportunities outside academia. More than 170 young physicists and engineers from LHC and non-collider experiments gathered for an evening of networking with CERN alumni and peers. Various former members of the LHC collaborations came back to CERN and to their scientific roots to provide the audience with insights into their successful moves from CERN to areas outside academia, to roles such as energy expert consultant, data scientist, independent software engineer and site-reliability engineer.

For some of the speakers the road to success was relatively easy and for others it was challenging and bumpy. However, what all the speakers had in common was their desire to continue working in a distributed and multicultural environment, and to find a job that would be as fulfilling and enriching as their experience at CERN; they had all succeeded in this!

This year, participants were able to benefit from the wisdom of two external guests from the recruiting side of the process, who explained why CERN is an amazing pool of talent in so many fields of today’s economy.

During a panel discussion, all the speakers gave practical advice on how to prepare for a successful transition and, in particular, how to boost one’s CV so that it is not filtered out by parsing machines searching for specific keywords. Furthermore, CVs have to be read in 60 seconds, so it is better to speak, for example, about a “three-dimensional camera” than a “time projection chamber”.

You may be interested in the regular events under the ‘Moving out of Academia to…’ banner, organised by the CERN Office of Alumni Relations.

See more photos on CDS.

On 14 and 15 September 2019, CERN will open its doors to the public for two special days at the heart of one of the world’s largest particle-physics laboratories*.

The CERN Open Days have become a regular feature of the period that we call the “long shutdown” during which our accelerators stop for around two years, to benefit from upgrades and renovation work. And Long Shutdown 2 has just started.

Similar to the 2013 edition, the 2019 Open Days will give people the chance to discover our facilities both underground and on the surface**. Debates, film screenings, theatre performances, experimental workshops and, of course, dozens of visit points spread all over the site will take you to the heart of our Laboratory, in direct contact with the science of today and tomorrow.

The programme of the event and all practical information will be communicated in 2019. For now, save the dates of this exceptional event and come and visit CERN.

* Admission is free of charge for all audiences.
** Some sites may have age and access restrictions.

It has been a record-breaking year for the LHC, with the accelerator delivering over twice as much proton–proton collision data as it did in all three years of its first run. But while the experimental collaborations were eagerly collecting fresh data from the LHC, they were also busy analysing data they have gathered over the years, presenting many new physics results during the course of 2018. Today, young scientists from the four main LHC experiments presented the year’s highlights at an open session of the CERN Council. Below are a few of dozens of new results, which showcase the richness and diversity of the LHC’s physics programme.

The hot early universe

The results from ALICE, the heavy-ion specialist at the LHC, focused mainly on studies of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a dense state of free quarks and gluons thought to have existed in the early universe. The LHC can recreate these conditions by colliding together lead nuclei. ALICE showed that the particle jets emerging from lead–lead collisions are narrower (more collimated) than those formed in proton–proton collisions, due to the way these particles interact with the QGP “soup”.

Comparing results with the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in the US, ALICE noted that the production of J/ψ mesons at the LHC was not as suppressed at low transverse momenta, concluding that the suppression caused by the QGP was countered by the recombination of charm and anticharm quarks into J/ψ mesons. They also observed that the ratio of Λ_c baryons to D mesons produced in lead–lead collisions was higher than in proton–proton and proton–lead collisions. This behaviour is expected if the charm quarks bind with other quarks in the QGP around them and form baryons and mesons. The dynamics of these processes will be studied precisely with future datasets that ALICE will collect in the next runs of the LHC. Furthermore, ALICE noted that this Λ_c-to-D ratio was higher than expected from theoretical calculations even in proton–proton and proton–lead collisions.

New Higgs signatures

The LHC’s two general-purpose experiments – ATLAS and CMS– continued their examination of the Higgs boson that they jointly discovered in 2012. This scalar boson transforms into lighter particles almost immediately after it is produced, and by studying the various transformations, or “decay modes”, available to it, physicists can test the Standard Model of particle physics. This year, both ATLAS and CMS announced that they had observed the Higgs transforming into a pairs of bottom–antibottom quarks for the first time. Although the Standard Model predicts that this decay mode is the most abundant, such bottom-antibottom pairs are produced in the LHC from a variety of processes, making it challenging to isolate those that come from the Higgs.

Since the top quark is heavier than the Higgs boson, nature forbids a Higgs transformation to pairs of top–antitop quarks. However, scientists can study their interactions by looking for instances where the a Higgs boson is produced along with a top–antitop pair, and ATLAS and CMS observed this “associated production” in data recorded in previous years. Both collaborations also highlighted their observations of the Higgs transforming into a tau–antitau pair, which was first reported by combining data from ATLAS and CMS.

Testing the Standard Model

Discovered over twenty years ago, the top quark remains a source of novel physics measurements and observations. Its mass is of particular interest, and ATLAS recently measured it to a high precision – 172.08 ± 0.39 (statistical error) ± 0.82 (systematic error) GeV – using data collected in 2012. Meanwhile, CMS explored rare production modes of the top quark that are sensitive to signs of physics beyond the Standard Model. The collaboration observed the production of a top quark in association with a Z boson and a second quark (tZq), and presented evidence for the production of a top along with a photon and another quark (tγq).

Unlike the massless photon, the W and Z bosons can bounce or “scatter” off each other, and the probability of this occurring is affected by the presence of the Higgs boson. ATLAS presented their observation of such scattering of pairs of W bosons (W^±W^±→W^±W^±) as well as of a W and a Z boson (W^±Z→W^±Z), both with statistical significances of over five standard deviations. Future data will help measure this scattering with greater precision, as physicists look for deviations from predicted values. W and Z bosons can also help in searches for new particles, and ATLAS searched for instances in which extremely massive particles transform into pairs of these. Analysis of the data recorded by the detector ruled out the presence of specific types of massive particles up to a 4.15 TeV.

Some extensions of the Standard Model propose the existence of an exotic Z boson, known as the Z′ (“Z-prime”) boson. CMS searched for such Z′ particles, but found no deviation in the data from the Standard Model’s predictions. CMS also searched for hypothetical particles known as leptoquarks, which are thought to be hybrids of leptons and quarks; the data did not show their presence. Other highlights from CMS included measurements of known Standard Model processes with improved precisions as well as novel studies in physics of B mesons.

Both ATLAS and CMS searched for many different signatures for the presence of dark matter and supersymmetry but found no evidence for their existence in the various parameters that were explored. These null results are crucial as they allow scientists to place stringent constraints on theoretical models that seek to explain gaps in the Standard Model.

The mystery of matter-antimatter asymmetry

Particle physicists are looking for possible solutions to explain why the universe is dominated by matter with almost no antimatter around. This asymmetry could be explained by differences in the way matter and antimatter interact with the weak force. The LHCb experiment was built to study these differences, known as charge-parity (CP) violation, and presented a variety of precision measurements at the session. LHCb measured several parameters associated with the so-called CKM matrix, which quantifies possible CP violation among quarks. In particular, the collaboration measured the angle γ with different methods, and obtained an average value of around 74°, making it the most precise measurement of this angle from a single experiment. They also presented the first evidence of the rare B_s meson transforming into an excited kaon and two muons as well as the best limits on the transformation of a B⁺ meson into three muons and a neutrino. Further, LHCb also highlighted new properties of the Ξ_cc baryon, which they observed for the first time last year.

LHCb also operated in fixed-target mode besides its regular collider mode by injecting noble gases such as helium into the beam pipe in between particle bunches that race around the LHC. The atoms of these noble gases served as stationary targets for the circulating protons, and LHCb was able to observe the production of J/ψ and D⁰ particles in these collisions as well as make the first measurement of the production rate of antiprotons in proton-helium collisions.

Looking forward…

The LHC’s Run 2 came to an end earlier this month and the second long shutdown (LS2) has begun; but this does not mean that the collaborations go into hibernation! Indeed, the wealth of data already gathered will take many more months to be fully explored. And the detectors will undergo transformations of their own while collisions are suspended over the course of LS2. The LHCb detector has fulfilled its original mandate and will soon be overhauled completely, with every major subsystem getting upgraded or replaced. ALICE will be upgrading most of its subdetectors, aiming for greater precision in measuring particle tracks. CMS and ATLAS will similarly receive major modifications as they prepare for the restart of the LHC in 2021 and eventually higher luminosities from the High-Luminosity LHC in 2025. These upgrades will ensure that the LHC experiments can keep recording excellent data in the forthcoming runs and continue their searches for new discoveries.

Every year, thousands of visitors of every age, cultural background and geographical origin discover and appreciate CERN’s Microcosm exhibition. Very soon, its offer will be enlarged to welcome blind and visually impaired visitors.

“We have teamed up with the local Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired to understand their needs and together develop material,” explains Emma Sanders, Head of Microcosm. “It is an important step because we would like our exhibition to be open and accessible to everyone wanting to find out about CERN and perhaps to inspire them to pursue a career in science.”

Scientists, design experts, content developers and members of the association spent two days at IdeaSquare evaluating the accessibility of Microcosm, adapting the existing content, discussing issues related to developing new models and finding new solutions. “We set up four mixed teams that had to work on four different challenges,” describes Mélissa Samson, who is running the accessibility project in Microcosm. “With the help of the Ideasquare team, they followed the principles of “Design Thinking” methodology, which consists of getting to know your user community and moving quickly from ideas to developing actual prototypes.”

At the end of the two days, the four teams had each developed ideas, exchanged views, tested prototypes and received feedback from visually impaired users. “The workshop has changed how we think about exhibition content,” says Sanders. “From very practical aspects like fonts, contrast and lighting to using a combination of sound and other sensory techniques to introduce content in new ways. We have also clearly understood that by creating content for blind and visually impaired visitors, we enrich the exhibition for all categories of the public. The workshop was a source of inspiration in this regard.”

The accessibility project will continue to develop over the coming months and some new content should be made available quite rapidly, as areas have already been identified within the exhibition space. “The workshop has had a very positive impact and we’ll soon be able to see its effects materialised in new exhibits and perhaps also extended into future exhibition projects,” confirms Samson.

You can find more photos from the workshop on CDS:

Due to the annual closure of CERN, no mail will be distributed on Friday 21 December. Mail will still be collected in the morning. Nevertheless, it will be possible for you to bring outgoing mail to building 555-R-002 until 12 noon.

As the CHIS contribution rates are unchanged for 2019, the CHIS contributions will only evolve if there is a change in the relevant Reference Salary (see Chapter XII of the CHIS Rules). For instance, as of 1 January 2019, the lump-sum monthly contributions based on Reference Salary II will be as follows:

1. Lump-sum contributions for voluntary members

The monthly contribution for voluntary members (e.g. users and associates) with the normal health insurance will be 1220 CHF per month, whilst for those with the reduced health insurance it will be 610 CHF.

2. Lump-sum contributions for post-compulsory members other than CERN pensioners

For post-compulsory members other than CERN pensioners, the monthly contribution will be 1303 CHF in the case of former staff members and former spouses continuing their affiliation, whilst in the case of formerly dependent children continuing theirs it will be 521 CHF.

HR Department

Tuesday, 18 December was an important milestone in the process of updating the European Strategy for Particle Physics, marking the deadline for the submission of proposals from the particle physics community for the long-term priorities of the discipline in Europe.

The European Strategy Group, which was established at the end of 2017 to coordinate the update process, has received 157 contributions from universities, laboratories, national institutes, collaborations and individuals, predominantly from Europe but including projects that extend beyond the continent. 

Along with its partner institutes, CERN, which operates the world’s most powerful particle collider and a unique accelerator complex, has submitted several major contributions, ranging from experiments using existing machines to ambitious new collider projects. These projects are designed to provide answers to the host of unresolved questions relating to matter and the Universe, such as the nature of dark matter, which makes up most of the Universe, and the mysterious imbalance between matter and antimatter.

To determine the relevance of new projects, existing machines and approved projects must be assessed. The results of a year-long study involving hundreds of physicists has been submitted to the European Strategy Group: it details the physics potential of the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) and provides valuable data for assessing the two collider projects to which CERN is contributing, CLIC and the FCC, which could continue the work begun by the LHC and the HL-LHC.

The CLIC (Compact Linear Collider) project, in which 75 institutes from some thirty countries are participating, aims to develop a very high-energy electron–positron collider, to be built and operated in three stages of energy, starting with 380 GeV and increasing to 1.5 TeV and 3 TeV. The FCC (Future Circular Collider) study, which involves 135 institutes in 34 countries, is studying several scenarios for a collider in a tunnel measuring 100 km in circumference. In an initial phase, the FCC could collide electrons and positrons at energies of up to 365 GeV and very high luminosity (FCC-ee). Lepton machines like CLIC and FCC-ee could be used to carry out detailed studies of particles that are crucial to our understanding of the physics of the infinitesimally small, such as the Higgs boson and the top quark, in order to reveal new processes.

The FCC study is also exploring the possibility of a hadron collider (FCC-hh) with an energy of 100 TeV, seven times higher than that of the LHC, which would be used to explore new energy ranges that are inaccessible with the present machines, search for signs of new physics and continue to study known particles and processes. The FCC study also covers the possibility of colliding hadrons with leptons and developing a version of the LHC in the existing tunnel at twice the present energy.

CERN has also collaborated on several other proposals, submitted in the framework of the Physics Beyond Colliders study. Launched in 2016, this study aims to take advantage of the extraordinary potential of CERN’s accelerator complex and research infrastructures in order to develop projects that complement the high-energy colliders. These projects would use a different approach to explore physics beyond the Standard Model. Twenty proposals have been submitted, ranging from the search for dark matter to the study of charge-parity symmetry breaking – which could explain the imbalance between matter and antimatter – and research into quantum chromodynamics. They aim to improve on existing experiments, set up new installations using CERN’s beamlines or develop entirely new concepts.

All of the proposals will be presented at a public scientific symposium that will be held in Granada, Spain in May 2019. The contributions and discussions will help shape the long-term priorities of particle physics in Europe. These priorities will be formalised at the beginning of 2020 in the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics.

For further information on the European Strategy update, see the press release issued in October 2018. 

The CERN Car Sharing service will be suspended during the CERN annual closure, as follow:

• Last booking possible on 20^th December 2018 until 6 pm.
• Bookings will be possible again on 8^th January 2019 as from 5 pm.

Thank you for your understanding,
Mobility Centre
SMB-SIS

Whether you’re passionate about science or simply curious, young or not so young, interested in technology or in international cooperation, 2018 had some wonderful surprises in store for you at CERN.

From new studies on the Higgs boson to the start-up of antimatter experiments, the inauguration of the Esplanade des Particules and innovative applications for medicine and society, CERN shone in many fields.

This video will take you on a trip through the highlights of 2018 at CERN.

For more information about these and other stories from this year, please visit cern.ch/go/2018-public-updates-en.

Have a good journey and happy 2019!

Operational Circular No. 11 entitled “The processing of personal data at CERN”, has been approved by the Director-General following a recommendation for approval decided by the Standing Concertation Committee at its meeting on 18 October 2018.

It is available via the following link: http://cds.cern.ch/record/2651311

The purpose of this new circular is to set out the Organization’s approach to data privacy. It brings together the privacy principles, as well as the rights and obligations of the Organization, with regard to the processing of personal data.

This circular enters into force on 1 January 2019, however, full implementation of the circular will be subject to an implementation calendar approved by the Director-General and published by the Office of Data Privacy.

It should be noted that any other provisions relating to the protection of personal data contained in other existing texts should henceforth be interpreted in the light of this circular, which will prevail over all conflicting provisions.

Additional information on processing of personal data may be found on the Office of Data Privacy website. Questions may also be addressed to the Office of Data Privacy or to any of the following Departmental Data Privacy Protection Coordinators:

• BE: K. Sigerud
• DG: N. Barzaghini
• EN: L. Serio
• EP, TH and RCS: B. Brugger
• FAP: D. Mathieson
• HR: N. Polivka
• HSE: C. Delamare
• IPT: A. Hahnel-Borgeaud
• IR: R. Bray
• IT: A. Dumitru
• PF: K. Mitchell
• SMB: O. Van Der Vossen
• TE and ATS-DO: G. Hobgen

HR Department

Please note that, due to work under way to install a new gate, access to hall SM18 via the Route de l’Europe will not be possible on 17 and 18 December and from 14 to 18 January 2019. People requiring access to the site during these periods are invited to use the BA7 entrance.

The work will begin on 26 November 2018 and will last until 24 January 2019.

Thank you for your understanding.

In 2019, net monthly remuneration will be paid into individual bank accounts on the following dates:

• Friday 25 January

• Monday 25 February

• Monday 25 March

• Thursday 25 April

• Friday 24 May

• Tuesday 25 June

• Thursday 25 July

• Monday 26 August

• Thursday 26 September
• Friday 25 October

• Monday 25 November
• Friday 20 December

Finance and Administrative Processes Department

In 1989, CERN was a hive of ideas and information stored on multiple incompatible computers. Tim Berners-Lee envisioned a unifying structure for linking information across different computers, and wrote a proposal in March 1989 called “Information Management: A Proposal”. By 1991, this vision of universal connectivity had become the World Wide Web!

To celebrate 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal and to kick-start a series of celebrations worldwide, CERN will host a 30th anniversary event on the morning of 12 March 2019 in partnership with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the World Wide Web Foundation.

This anniversary event will be webcast and you can already start planning your Web@30 viewing party: a unique opportunity to reach out to and further extend your scientific and social community by inviting guests to watch the event (live or recorded, based on your time zone and constraints) and follow up with a discussion. The event itself in CERN’s main auditorium will be by invitation only.

Find out more via the Web@30 website. Save the date to join us to watch live, and stay tuned to discover more in the coming weeks.

Guido Altarelli was a leading figure in 20th century particle physics. His scientific contributions and leadership played a key role in the development of the Standard Model of fundamental interactions, as well as the current search for new physics beyond it, both at and beyond CERN.

This book is a collection of original contributions, at the cutting edge of scientific research, by some of the leading theoretical and experimental high-energy physicists currently in the field. These were inspired by Guido's ideas, whether directly or indirectly.

"From my Vast Repertoire", ed. by S. Forte, A. Levy, G. Ridolfi, World Scientific, 2018, ISBN 9789813238046

The book presentation will take place
on Monday 28 January 2019
from 15:30 to 17:00 
in room Georges Charpak (room F / 60-6-015)

For more information, see: https://indico.cern.ch/event/782019/

Albert Hofmann died on the night of 28 December 2018. We all had the good fortune to share time with this wonderful person and were deeply saddened to hear of his untimely death.

Albert finished his studies at ETH Zurich in the mid-sixties and then went on to work at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator (CEA) at Harvard University. The team at CEA was a highly reputed one, including names like Gus Voss and Herman Winick. We used to joke with Albert saying that, according to him, everything associated with accelerators was invented at CEA. He left CEA and came to the CERN ISR in 1973, joining the ISR Accelerator Theory group, where he made seminal contributions to the performance of this collider. When the ISR was closed, Albert returned to California to work on the SLC damping rings and on SPEAR. He was invited to return to CERN in 1989 to take joint responsibility for the commissioning of LEP. Albert made remarkable contributions to the performance of LEP throughout its operating lifetime of eleven years. He subsequently returned to California to work with Ron Ruth on a compact light source developed by Lyncean Technologies.

Albert was an inspiration, a mentor and a role model for everyone who worked with him. He was world-renowned as a brilliant accelerator physicist and, just as importantly, he was a kind, sweet person.

We witnessed on many occasions how younger staff were magnetically attracted to Albert for his simplified explanations of complicated physics issues. He gave many inspiring lectures at the CERN Accelerator School, simplifying, as only he could, some of the most difficult concepts in accelerator physics.

He also wrote his monumental book on synchrotron radiation. He was such a perfectionist that he often expressed his fear that this book would never be finished, as he wanted to include all the new ideas that were continuously being invented.

He was always over-generous in giving scientific credit to colleagues who had in some cases only made a minor contribution. Albert also had an impish, tongue-in-cheek sense of humour and told fascinating stories about his childhood and about the early days of colliders.

We feel an acute sense of loss as we say goodbye to this generous, modest, inspiring and unpretentious role model.

A more complete obituary will be published in the March-April 2019 issue of the CERN Courier.

The first two crab cavities were installed in the SPS tunnel last February, for a series of unprecedented tests. When the time came to take stock, the teams from the BE, EN and TE departments, which contributed to the development of the crab cavities, were all smiles.

Crab cavities are important components developed for the High-Luminosity LHC, which will be commissioned after 2025 and will run at a higher luminosity than the LHC. Installed on either side of the ATLAS and CMS experiments, the crab cavities will tilt the proton bunches of each beam in order to maximise their overlap when they meet at the heart of the two experiments and thus increase the likelihood of collisions.

The first two crab cavities were tested with the SPS beam during 70 hours of machine development. Following the complex installation of the system in April, the first success came during the initial test period, on 23 May: generating a transverse field, the superconducting cavities tilted the proton bunches, a world first.

Thereafter, a number of tests were carried out to show that the cavities could manipulate the beam with precision, i.e. tilt the bunches to the desired degree. “We have validated the principle and its reproducibility and proven that crab cavities are an excellent tool for manipulating proton beams”, explains Rama Calaga of the BE-RF group, who is in charge of the project. “We have also shown that the operation is transparent – in other words, that we can manipulate the beams throughout the beam cycle without changing their dynamics.”

The cavities were used with beams at energies of 26 GeV and then 270 GeV, and with a transverse voltage of up to 2 megavolts, i.e. 60% of the nominal voltage that will be used in the HL-LHC. The high-power radiofrequency system proved that it works correctly.

One major concern was the disruption caused by the operation of the cavities. “These effects are less significant than we expected.In particular, the emittance increases only slightly, which was a very important factor”, explains Rama Calaga. The smaller the emittance, the smaller the transverse dimension of the beam; this is therefore a crucial parameter for an accelerator.

As well as the beam dynamics, other parameters had to be verified. The teams tested the cryogenics system that cools down the cavities so that they can operate in a superconducting state. A brand new cryogenics system, with a mobile cold box, was commissioned for the test bench. “We were able to validate the appropriate sizing of the cryogenics system, as well as the vacuum system”, says Rama Calaga.

The alignment of the cavities was also crucial: a particularly novel alignment system using interferometry made it possible to monitor the position of the cavities during cooling and align them to within 0.2 millimetres transversely. “We verified both our assembly technique and the alignment procedure”, says Rama Calaga.

During this first year of operation, the mobile table developed specially for the test bench proved invaluable: it moved the cryomodule, which is full of liquid helium cooled to 2 kelvins, around ten times, in order to position it on and then remove it from the beam line. No fewer than 8 tonnes were moved to a precision of within 100 microns or less. Quite a feat of engineering!

With the accelerators shut down, the development of the crab cavities continues. The pre-series of the two cavity types are currently being manufactured at CERN and by its industrial partners, in collaboration with American, British and Canadian institutes. The SPS test bench will be upgraded during the second long shutdown in order to carry out tests during Run 3, with the aim of improving the performance of the cavities.