How is the ATLAS detector preparing for the future? When the CERN accelerator complex switched off in December 2018, ATLAS scientists and technicians promptly got to work opening the shaft leading from ground level to the underground ATLAS cavern, as well as opening up the detector itself. They will be maintaining and upgrading the detector over the next two years, the time CERN has allocated for a technical break called Long Shutdown 2 (LS2). Some of the improvements are part of the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), set to run from 2026. The upgrade will greatly increase the rate of particle collisions, bring higher readout rates and create more opportunities for physics discoveries.

ATLAS is the largest LHC experiment. Installed between 2003 and 2008, it aims, like CMS, to understand the properties of the Higgs boson and search for new physics.

New not-so-small wheels

A major improvement to the experiment will be the installation of two new wheel-shaped detectors to track particles called muons. Muons can be thought of as heavier cousins of electrons and pass through the inner parts of the detector with little disturbance. If you imagine the detector as an onion, the muon spectrometer is the outer skin. Muons that speed away at angles smaller than 40 degrees from the beam direction are measured by a series of three layers of subdetectors, the innermost of which is known as the small wheel – because it is “only” 9.3 metres in diameter.

The new wheels will improve ATLAS’s triggering capabilities and will be able to cope with the higher muon rates expected from the HL-LHC. Each wheel consists of 16 wedges, or sectors, covered with layers of detector chambers known as micromegas (MM) and small-strip thin-gap chambers (sTGC). Both MMs and sTGCs have excellent precision tracking capabilities, at the level of 100  micrometres, and the very good response time needed to uniquely identify the collision time.

Assembly is currently taking place on the surface and the wheels will then be transported to ATLAS and lowered through the shaft to the detector. One of the existing small wheels was brought to the surface last week and the first new wheel is scheduled to enter the ATLAS cavern in spring 2020.

Remodelling ATLAS inside and out

Linked to the upgrades of the muon detection system is the addition of 16 new stations to improve ATLAS’s capability to detect muons in the region between the barrel and the endcaps. The stations contain gas-filled small monitored drift tubes (sMDT) and resistive plate chambers (RPCs). Physicists can track muons using the trail of electrically charged particles caused by the muons passing through the gas. The reconstruction of the muons’ paths will be improved thanks to sMDTs with a smaller diameter and new-generation RPCs with reduced electrode thickness.

Another major task happening during LS2 is the replacement of some components of the Liquid Argon Calorimeter’s (LAr) front-end electronics. This will improve ATLAS’s ability to preserve important signals coming from electrons and photons. On top of that, the upgrade of the trigger and data-acquisition systems will prepare the experiment for the HL-LHC.

In parallel to work on the detector, construction work is also continuing apace around ATLAS on the surface and underground, in preparation for the HL-LHC. A 62-metre-deep shaft has just been completed and civil engineers are now busy digging a service cavern and galleries for new equipment.

While many of ATLAS’s upgrades and installations will take place during Long Shutdown 3 (LS3), which is scheduled to begin in 2024, the activities taking place over the next two years will make it a better performing detector, ready to take data when the LHC restarts in 2021.

Read more in “ATLAS upgrades in LS2” in the latest CERN Courier, ATLAS’s news summary, and LS2 highlights from ALICE, CMS and LHCb.

More photos from ATLAS are available on CDS:

In 2005, the European Commission adopted a European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. To date, 1119 organisations have endorsed the Charter and Code (C&C) principles and a further 455 are “acknowledged institutions”, a list to which CERN’s name was added in December 2018. This date was also when CERN won the ‘HR Excellence in Research’ Award in the framework of the Human Resources Strategy for Researchers (HR4SR). The award followed several months of work to complete the extensive application process, involving multiple actors and stakeholders throughout the Organization. This began with a survey to evaluate to what extent CERN implements each of the 40 principles of the Charter and Code, further to which the CERN C&C Focus Group carried out a comprehensive gap analysis covering some key HR themes. Key points that CERN committed to follow up were collated in a clear action plan, submitted as part of the application, on the basis of which the Organization will be regularly audited and monitored to ensure compliance with the Code.

For James Purvis, head of CERN’s Human Resources department, this is an important step forward for the Organization:

We are extremely proud to have obtained this award. It is a key milestone – not only in the recognition of CERN’s HR practices, but it may also become critical in the future in CERN’s ability to succeed in future EC project submissions.

CERN is deeply committed to the principles and ethos of the European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers, whose natural integration in CERN’s Human Resources and management processes are already contributing greatly towards promoting CERN as an attractive employer in Europe.

Find out more about the content of CERN’s application for the HR Excellence in Research award and what this means for the Organization at:

https://hr-dep.web.cern.ch/content/cern-and-eu-charter-and-code

Bruno Nicolai, former coordinator of the installations at LIL (LEP Injector Linacs) and EPA (Electron Positron Accumulator) passed away on 11 November 2018. Just a few hours later, his wife, Annamaria Vecchiatti, also passed away. Bruno and Annina (this is the affectionate nickname Bruno used to call his wife) got married in 1954. Their entire life is a love story, right through to their last day together. 

Bruno was born in Ficarolo (Rovigo, Italy) in 1930. Besides his wife and his two daughters, Bruno actually had another big love: CERN. A mechanical engineer, Bruno arrived at CERN in 1958 and became a staff member in 1959. He obtained an indefinite contract in 1963. 

When Bruno arrived at CERN, the Laboratory was in the process of giving birth to big human adventures and Bruno was passionate about interacting with the physicists, creating new experiments, and finding unexplored technical solutions to solve issues and allow scientists to carry out their experiments. At the end of 1958, Bruno took part in the g-2 experiment, which aimed at measuring the muon anomalous magnetic moment. 

After the g-2 experiment, Bruno continued to develop his career: first in the SC (Synchro Cyclotron) division, and then in the MPS (Machine Proton Synchrotron) division, becoming a real expert in magnets and, in particular, in injection and ejection systems. During this period, he was able to use his wide range of knowledge, working equally successfully with high voltage equipment, hydraulics, high vacuum, controls and civil engineering. He joined the PS ejection team in 1967 and was responsible for the “Straight Flush” kicker system. In 1974, he became KM (Kicker Maintenance) section leader in the Acceleration and Ejection group under D. Bloess in the PS Division. In the 1980s, he joined the LPI (LEP Pre Injectors) group and became responsible for the coordination of all installations going into the LIL (LEP Injector Linacs) and EPA (Electron Positron Accumulator) buildings. 

In the same years, he was also an active member of the “Joint Advisory Rehabilitation and Disability Board”. Bruno handled this delicate task with his usual professionalism and passion.

Bruno retired in 1990 but his passion for CERN didn’t stop and actually found another way to manifest itself: through his activity as a CERN official guide. While his health was becoming ever more precarious, letters of appreciation from schools and groups were piling up in his personal book of memories.

Bruno had a wonderful career at CERN, largely because Annina always supported him through all the difficulties, the long nights spent at CERN, the frequent trips and, towards the end of Bruno’s life, through a series of serious illnesses that never left him until he passed away.

Bruno left a mark of love in all of us, his friends, colleagues and people who had the chance to meet him. In spite of all the tough challenges life presented him with, he never lost his smile, not a fake one but a real, heartful smile. He used to make jokes about his age, swapping the figures around when it would make him younger (e.g. 75 would become 57) and he was indeed still very young when he passed away at the age of 88 (no convenient swap available, he used to laugh about it). Annina and Bruno will be sorely missed and always remembered together. A perfect circle of love and passion that makes life seem worth living.

His colleagues and friends

For three years now, CERN has been organising visits of women scientists and engineers to local schools on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science celebrated annually on 11 February. This year, new partnerships with the Science Outreach Department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE) Scienscope, gave a new scope to the project.

From 11 to 15 February, 57 very enthusiastic volunteers from CERN, UNIGE and EPFL gave 150 talks, reaching over 3100 pupils!

They spoke about their background, revealed some mysteries of science and conducted small demonstrations in front of very curious school pupils. The idea behind the project is to have them act as female role models to change the perception towards scientific and engineering professions. They contributed in changing sexist stereotypes, enabling young girls to imagine themselves as researchers, explorers, innovators, engineers or inventors.

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If you are interested in participating get in contact with Local engagement.

Big changes are under way at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). One of the major operations is the upgrade of the machine’s acceleration system. “The beams in the High-Luminosity LHC will be twice as intense, which requires an increase in radiofrequency power,” explains Erk Jensen, leader of the Radiofrequency (BE-RF) group. One aspect of the LHC Injectors Upgrade (LIU) project is therefore bringing the SPS acceleration system up to standard.

Erk Jensen shows us around the huge Building 870, just behind the CERN Control Centre on the Prévessin site, which is a hive of activity. Everywhere you look, teams are pulling out cables, unscrewing components and removing electronic modules. Dismantling is one of the main activities of this first phase of the Long Shutdown. No fewer than 400 km of cables are being removed at Points 3 and 5 of the SPS, for example.

In the large halls, we can see the huge power converter and amplifier installations that supply the radiofrequency (RF) accelerator cavities of the SPS. The amplifiers use an electronic tube technology dating back to the 1970s and 80s, as the SPS was commissioned in 1976 and transformed into a proton-antiproton collider in 1981. Two tube systems exist alongside each other, each producing 2 megawatts of power.

To supply the power needed for the High-Luminosity LHC, a team from the RF group, headed by Eric Montesinos, working with the firm Thales Gérac, has developed a new system that uses solid-state amplifiers, similar to those that were recently developed for the SOLEIL and ESRF synchrotrons. The transistors for these amplifiers are assembled in sets of four on modules that supply 2 kilowatts, much less power than was delivered by the electronic tubes (between 35 and 135 kilowatts). But a total of 2560 modules, i.e. 10 240 transistors, will be spread across 32 towers. The power from 16 towers will be combined via an RF power combiner. The whole system will be able to provide RF power of two times 1.6 megawatts to the cavities.

This system is much more flexible, since the power is distributed across thousands of transistors,” observes Eric Montesinos. “If a few transistors stop working, the RF system will not stop completely, whereas if one of the tubes failed, we had to intervene quickly.” In addition, it’s much easier to change a module, especially since electronic tubes in this frequency range are an endangered species, accelerators being among the last applications of the technology.

Development of the solid-state amplifier system began in 2016. A team from the RF group worked in collaboration with scientists from Thales Gérac, and many tests and adjustments had to be carried out. Power electronics are subject to significant thermomechanical effects, so the technique for fitting the transistors onto the plate of the module, to take one example, turned out to be a particularly tricky aspect to get right. After several dozen complex prototypes had been produced, the work finally came to a successful conclusion last year: the first tower housing 80 transistor modules operated for 1000 hours, passing the validation tests in August. This was a great success that allowed series production to begin while the tests continued.

The structures, i.e. the 32 towers, have already been installed in a new room, giving it the air of a science-fiction movie set. Only one of them so far is equipped with its RF power modules, offering a taste of the even more futuristic look that the room will have in a few months’ time. The modules will be delivered as of May, continuing through to the end of the year; all of them will be tested on a specially designed test bench before being installed in the towers. Some painstaking work faces the teams that will install all the modules.

In parallel, the cavities have been removed from the tunnel. The SPS has four 200 MHz cavities: two formed of four sections, and two of five sections, each section measuring four metres. “To accelerate more intense beams, we need to reduce the length of the cavities in order to maintain a sufficiently strong electromagnetic field along their whole length,” explains Erk Jensen. The teams will therefore reassemble the sections in order to form a total of six cavities: two of four sections and four of three sections.

At the same time, the beam control system is being replaced. The Faraday cage, which houses the electronic racks for the beam control system, has been completely emptied, ready to be fitted with the latest electronics and new infrastructure (lighting, cooling and ventilation systems, among others). Finally, an improved system for eliminating parasitic resonances will be installed, based on HOM (higher order mode) couplers, which were tested during the last run.

The teams must stick to a tight schedule, comprising all the dismantling work, the start of installation later in 2019, and numerous tests and commissioning tasks in 2020.

See more pictures on CDS :

Are you a hacker? Programmer? Software developer? Coder? Many of us are. And, as intelligent humans, we tend to concentrate on the new and not try to reinvent the wheel, instead benefitting from what has been already created elsewhere. So we have more time to produce something new, something adapted to our needs, and leave the basics to software packages already produced somewhere else. Standing on the shoulders of other hackers, programmers, developers and coders worldwide, Gitlab at CERN, Github around the world and Stack Overflow, to name just three, provide a vast variety of libraries and code snippets for already existing functionalities. All you need to do is download or copy-paste them. But what if those hackers, programmers, developers and coders turn rogue?

Open source code is great, but does not come without risks. As anyone can write and share code, it is an inherent fact that some code comes with blatant security vulnerabilities. These are not necessarily introduced with malicious intent but the openness of the source code allows anyone to verify the integrity of the code and correct it if needed. However, sometimes even the open source community fails to identify major vulnerabilities like “Heartbleed”. So reusing public libraries comes with a risk. And this risk becomes more severe if malicious third parties intentionally tamper with software libraries and just wait for software developers “driving by”, downloading those malicious libraries and running that code in their software. Code executed and… boom! It would not be the first time that companies have been compromised through malicious libraries or modifications thereof. For example, a backdoor was discovered in the Python module named “ssh-decorator” distributed through “PyPi”, a repository of software for the Python programming language. Any SSH connection credentials were forwarded to a malicious party. Similarly, some malicious libraries have been named to resemble the name of a real, widely used library like, e.g. “crossenv”. But the fake one (“cross-env”) was extorting local environment variables and, potentially, also credentials. Thirty-nine more typo-squatted libraries were identified and deleted from “NCM”, a popular package manager for the JavaScript programming language. And then there are legacy libraries, not maintained by anyone any more, but still in use. In this example, the ownership was naively passed over to a malicious evil-doer who then introduced some malicious code in the otherwise clean library…

So automatic integration of external software libraries e.g. from PyPi or through NCM comes with a risk! Like with surfing the web, STOP – THINK – DON’T CLICK (or rather, don’t import). Only install software libraries from trusted sources. And even then, inspect the code either manually (cumbersome as it is) or run at least a static code analysis tool on top of that. The CERN Computer Security Team provides a variety of static code checkers for that purpose. Also consider using a centralised software repository manager like Sonatype Nexus or Apache Maven. The former is provided by CERN IT department and used for accelerator control system development and in the ATLAS and CMS experiments.

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Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

A jewel of particle physics, the CMS experiment is a 14 000-tonne detector that aims to solve a wide range of questions about the mysteries around the Higgs boson and dark matter. Now that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) beam has been switched off for a two-year technical stop, Long Shutdown 2 (LS2), CMS is preparing for significant maintenance work and upgrades.

All the LHC experiments at CERN want to exploit the full benefits of the accelerator’s upgrade, the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), scheduled to start in 2026. The HL-LHC will produce between five and ten times more collisions than the LHC, allowing more precision measurements of rare phenomena that are predicted in the Standard Model to be taken, and maybe even detecting new particles that have never been seen before. To take advantage of this, some of CMS’s components need to be replaced.

In the heart of CMS

Hidden inside several layers of subdetectors, the pixel detector surrounding the beam pipe is the core of the experiment, as it is the closest to the particle-collision point. During LS2, the innermost layer of the present pixel detector will be replaced, using more high-luminosity-tolerant and radiation-tolerant components. The beam pipe will also be replaced in LS2, with one that will allow the extremities of the future pixel detectors to get even closer to the interaction point. This third-generation pixel detector will be installed during the third long shutdown (LS3) in 2024–2026.

Without missing a thing

Beyond the core, the CMS collaboration is also planning to work on the outermost part of the detector, which detects and measures muons – particles similar to electrons, but much heavier. They are preparing to install 40 large Multi-Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) chambers to measure muons that scatter at an angle of around 10° – one of the most challenging angles for the detector to deal with. Invented in 1997 by Fabio Sauli, GEM chambers are already used in other CERN experiments, including COMPASS, TOTEM and LHCb, but the scale of CMS is far greater than the other detectors. The GEM chambers consist of a thin, metal-clad polymer foil, chemically pierced with millions of holes, typically 50 to 100 per millimetre, submerged in a gas. As muons pass through, electrons released by the gas drift into the holes, multiply in a very strong electric field and transfer to a collection region.

Fast-forward to the future

Some of the existing detectors would not perform well enough during the HL-LHC phase, as the number of proton–proton collisions produced in the HL-LHC will be ten times higher than that originally planned for the CMS experiment. Therefore, the high-granularity calorimeter (HGCAL) will replace the existing endcap electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters during LS3, between 2024 and 2026. The new detector will comprise over 1000 m² of hexagonal silicon sensors and plastic scintillator tiles, distributed over 100 layers (50 in each endcap), providing unprecedented information about electrons, photons and hadrons. Exploiting this detector is a major challenge for software and analysis, and physicists and computer science experts are already working on advanced techniques, such as machine learning.

Building, building, building

CMS has also been involved with the HL-LHC civil-engineering work, which kick-started in June 2018 and is ongoing. The project includes five new buildings on the surface at Cessy, France, as well as modifications to the underground cavern and galleries.

CMS’s ambitious plan for the near and longer-term future is preparing the detector for more exciting undertakings. Stay tuned for more.

Read more in “CMS has high luminosity in sight” in the latest CERN Courier, as well as LS2 highlights from ALICE, ATLAS and LHCb.

More photos from CMS are available on CDS:

Anyone looking at sites around CERN would be forgiven for thinking that we’re moving out, such is the scale of the undertaking we have just begun for LS2, and such is the volume of equipment that’s being removed from the accelerator tunnels and buildings for replacement or refurbishment. LS2 is a shutdown that is dedicated mainly to the LHC Injector Upgrade project, LIU, through which the entire injector chain is being prepared for the task of delivering high-brightness beams in readiness for the High-Luminosity LHC, HL-LHC, scheduled to start up in 2026. The 2000 or so people working on the accelerators in LS2 have their sights firmly set on the progressive restart of physics in experimental halls around the Laboratory in early 2021.

LIU got under way in 2015, and much has already been accomplished. From the construction of an entirely new linear accelerator, Linac 4, to the installation of a ground-breaking RF solid-state power amplifier system and new beam dump for the SPS and the delivery of a powerful 200 MVA transformer at Prévessin, new installations have been appearing across the CERN landscape, ready to be brought into play during LS2. Nothing is being left untouched. From the venerable Proton Synchrotron and its Booster to the SPS, every machine upstream of the LHC will be transformed over the next two years.

The final touches to the meticulous LIU planning process were made earlier this month at a very productive workshop in Montreux, mapping out the road to physics resuming in 2021. By the time this happened, however, LS2 work was already in full swing. At the PS Booster, work got under way to ready the machine to receive beams at 160 MeV instead of 50 MeV, and to accelerate them to 2 GeV instead of 1.4 GeV. In the PS itself, the removal of 43 of the machine’s 100 bending magnets started, while at the SPS, the replacement of some 400 kilometres of cabling began and components of the acceleration system were brought to the surface for refurbishment. All these are major undertakings in their own right, and give a glimpse of the scale and complexity of the task at hand. As LS2 progresses, dedicated articles in the Bulletin will keep you up to speed - this week’s article describes the ground-breaking solid-state power amplifiers that will be powering the SPS RF cavities.

Although LIU is the main focus of LS2, there’s much else going on. Next year, for example, the first set of two 11-tesla dipole magnets using cable based on the niobium-tin compound, Nb₃Sn, will be installed at Point 7 of the LHC. This is a technology that has long been studied at CERN. It was considered in the early days of the LHC project, but was not sufficiently mature at the time. Now that the technology has evolved, this magnet will be the first of its kind to be installed in a particle accelerator. When the HL-LHC starts up, the final focus magnets for ATLAS and CMS will use niobium-tin cable, as will the four dipoles at Point 7. Niobium-tin technology supports higher current density, allowing higher fields to be generated, leading in turn to a sharper focus at the experiments, and to greater bending power in the four dipoles, which have to produce the same bending power over their 11-metre length as the standard LHC dipoles produce over 15 metres in order to free up space for new collimators. In LS2, the consolidation of the LHC main dipole by-pass diodes will also be achieved, and some 20 superconducting magnets will be exchanged.

As with LS1 before it, LS2 has an ambitious work plan. And as with LS1, our working mantra is: “safety first, quality second, schedule third”. We have a lot to do, we are well prepared, we will succeed, and we will succeed safely.

The Advisory Committee of CERN Users (ACCU) is the forum for discussion between the CERN Management and the representatives of CERN Users to review the practical means taken by CERN for the work of Users of the Laboratory. The mandate of ACCU is available on: http://accu.web.cern.ch/content/mandate

There are one or two Delegates from each Member State (two Delegates from the large Member States), one Delegate from each of the Associate Members, four Delegates from non-Member States (NMS), and two from CERN. The list of ACCU members is available on: http://accu.web.cern.ch/content/accu-members

ACCU meetings are attended by the Director General and members of the Directorate, other members of the CERN management and departmental representatives, the Head of the Users' Office and a representative of the CERN Staff Association. Other members of the CERN Staff attend as necessary for specific agenda items.

Chairperson: Dragoslav-Laza Lazic (Dragoslav.Lazic@cern.ch)
Secretary: Michael Hauschild (ACCU.Secretary@cern.ch)

Anyone wishing to raise any points under “Any Other Business” at the upcoming ACCU meeting is invited to contact the appropriate User representative, or the Chairperson or the Secretary.

Zagreb. Today, the Director-General of CERN¹, Fabiola Gianotti, and the Minister of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia, Blaženka Divjak, in the presence of Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, signed an Agreement admitting Croatia as an Associate Member of CERN. The status will come into effect on the date the Director-General receives Croatia’s notification that it has completed its internal approval procedures in respect of the Agreement.

“It is a great pleasure to welcome Croatia into the CERN family as an Associate Member. Croatian scientists have made important contributions to a large variety of experiments at CERN for almost four decades and as an Associate Member, new opportunities open up for Croatia in scientific collaboration, technological development, education and training,” said Fabiola Gianotti.

“Croatian participation in CERN as an Associate Member is also a way to retain young and capable people in the country because they can participate in important competitive international projects, working and studying in the Croatian educational and scientific institutions that collaborate with CERN,” said Blaženka Divjak.

Croatian scientists have been engaged in scientific work at CERN for close to 40 years. Already in the late 1970s, researchers from Croatian institutes worked on the SPS heavy-ion programme. In 1994, research groups from Split officially joined the CMS collaboration and one year later a research group from Zagreb joined the ALICE collaboration, working with Croatian industry partners to contribute to the construction of the experiments’ detectors. Scientists from Croatia have also been involved in other CERN experiments such as CAST, NA61, ISOLDE, nTOF and OPERA.

CERN and Croatia signed a Cooperation Agreement in 2001, setting priorities for scientific and technical cooperation. This resulted in an increased number of scientists and students from Croatia participating in CERN’s programmes, including the CERN Summer Student Programme. In May 2014, Croatia applied for Associate Membership.

As an Associate Member, Croatia will be entitled to participate in the CERN Council, Finance Committee and Scientific Policy Committee. Nationals of Croatia will be eligible for staff positions and Croatia’s industry will be able to bid for CERN contracts, opening up opportunities for industrial collaboration in advanced technologies.

Footnote(s)

At the end of 2018, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) completed its second multi-year run (“Run 2”) that saw the machine reach a proton–proton collision energy of 13 TeV, the highest ever reached by a particle accelerator. During this run, from 2015 to 2018, LHC experiments produced unprecedented volumes of data with the machine’s performance exceeding all expectations.

This meant exceptional use of computing, with many records broken in terms of data acquisition, data rates and data volumes. The CERN Advanced Storage system (CASTOR), which relies on a tape-based backend for permanent data archiving, reached 330 PB of data (equivalent to 330 million gigabytes) stored on tape, an equivalent of over 2000 years of 24/7 HD video recording. In November 2018 alone, a record-breaking 15.8 PB of data were recorded on tape, a remarkable achievement given that it corresponds to more than what was recorded during the first year of the LHC’s Run 1.

The distributed storage system for the LHC experiments exceeded 200 PB of raw storage with about 600 million files. This system (EOS) is disk-based and open-source, and was developed at CERN for the extreme LHC computing requirements. As well as this, 830 PB of data and 1.1 billion files were transferred all over the world by File Transfer Service. To face these computing challenges and to better support the CERN experiments during Run 2, the entire computing infrastructure, and notably the storage systems, went through major upgrades and consolidation over the past few years.

New IT research-and-development activities have already begun in preparation for the LHC’s Run 3 (foreseen for 2021 to 2023). “Our new software, named CERN Tape Archive (CTA), is the new tape storage system for the custodial copy of the physics data and a replacement for its predecessor, CASTOR. The main goal of CTA is to make more efficient use of the tape drives, to handle the higher data rate anticipated during Run 3 and Run 4 of the LHC,” explains German Cancio, who leads the Tape, Archive & Backups storage section in CERN’s IT department. CTA will be deployed during the ongoing second long shutdown of the LHC (LS2), replacing CASTOR. Compared to the last year of Run 2, data archival is expected to be two-times higher during Run 3 and five-times higher or more during Run 4 (foreseen for 2026 to 2029).

The LHC’s computing will continue to evolve. Most of the data collected in CERN’s data centre is highly valuable and needs to be preserved and stored for future generations of physicists. CERN’s IT department will therefore be taking advantage of LS2, the current maintenance and upgrade of the accelerator complex, to perform the required consolidation of the computing infrastructure. They will be upgrading the storage infrastructure and software to face the likely scalability and performance challenges when the LHC restarts in 2021 for Run 3.

On Tuesday 19 March and Wednesday 20 March, 36 Belgian firms will be present at CERN. The goal of these two days it to create new procurement opportunities with Belgian industry. CERN personnel are encouraged to participate in B2B meetings directly with the companies, these will be held at Ideasquare (Building 3179, near the Globe) on 19-20 March 2019.

The list of firms and the form for CERN personnel to sign up for the meeting is here: https://indico.cern.ch/event/802580

This two-day event is part of CERN’s broader goal to aim for balanced industrial return, i.e. a fair distribution of CERN’s procurement budget to our Member States.

Due to an exceptional convoy, Route Einstein, Route Balmer and Route de Meyrin will be closed on Thursday 14 March from 9.00 am to 12.00 pm. The Route de Meyrin will also be closed from the Route de l’Europe roundabout to Entrance B. A diversion will be put in place by the Swiss and French traffic services (see map).

Entrance E will stay open exceptionally on Thursday morning until 1:00 pm (to enter CERN only, not to exit). 

Thank you for your understanding.

EN-HE Transport Group

Geneva. Today, the CERN Research Board approved a new experiment designed to look for light and weakly interacting particles at the LHC. FASER, or the Forward Search Experiment, will complement CERN’s ongoing physics programme, extending its discovery potential to several new particles. Some of these sought-after particles are associated with dark matter, which is a hypothesised kind of matter that does not interact with the electromagnetic force and consequently cannot be directly detected using emitted light. Astrophysical evidence shows that dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe, but it has never been observed and studied in a laboratory.

With an expanding interest in undiscovered particles, particularly long-lived particles and dark matter, new experiments have been proposed to expand the scientific potential of CERN’s accelerator complex and infrastructure as part of the Physics Beyond Collider (PBC) study, under whose aegis FASER operates. “This novel experiment helps diversify the physics programme of colliders such as the LHC, and allows us to address unanswered questions in particle physics from a different perspective,” explains Mike Lamont, co-coordinator of the PBC study group.

The four main LHC detectors are not suited for detecting the light and weakly interacting particles that might be produced parallel to the beam line. They may travel hundreds of metres without interacting with any material before transforming into known and detectable particles, such as electrons and positrons. The exotic particles would escape the existing detectors along the current beam lines and remain undetected. FASER will therefore be located along the beam trajectory 480 metres downstream from the interaction point within ATLAS. Although the protons in the particle beams will be bent by magnets around the LHC, the light, very weakly interacting particles will continue along a straight line and their “decay products” can be spotted by FASER. The potential new particles would be very collimated with the beam, spreading out very little, therefore allowing a relatively small and inexpensive detector to perform highly sensitive searches.

The detector’s total length is under 5 metres and its core cylindrical structure has a radius of 10 centimetres. It will be installed in a side tunnel along an unused transfer line which links the LHC to its injector, the Super Proton Synchrotron. To allow FASER to be constructed in a quick and affordable way, it will use spare detector parts kindly donated from the ATLAS and LHCb experiments. The collaboration of 16 institutes that is building the detector and will carry out the experiments is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation and the Simons Foundation.

FASER will search for a suite of hypothesised particles including so-called “dark photons”, particles which are associated with dark matter, neutralinos and others. The experiment will be installed during the ongoing Long Shutdown 2 and start taking data from LHC’s Run 3 between 2021 and 2023.

“It is very exciting to have FASER approved for installation at CERN. It is amazing how the collaboration has come together so quickly and we are looking forward to recording our first data when the LHC starts up again in 2021,” says Jamie Boyd, co-spokesperson of the FASER experiment.

“FASER is a neat physics proposal that addresses a particular aspect in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model and I am pleased to see it being implemented so efficiently,” adds Eckhard Elsen, CERN’s Director for Research and Computing.

Industrial radiography is a non-destructive testing technique used widely at CERN to examine the internal structure of samples ranging from welds to structural elements of buildings. It uses high-energy radioactive sources or an X-ray generator to examine the structure and integrity of samples in a non-destructive way. It is widely deployed at CERN by the Engineering department’s Mechanical and Materials Engineering (EN-MME) group to examine structures as diverse as the piping that feeds fuel to the new diesel groups close to Entrance B and welds in the fire extinction network of the new Building 311. The work may be outsourced to one or more companies, depending on the workload at any given time.

Radiography can be carried out anywhere on the CERN sites, indoors or outdoors, including in areas where you would not normally expect to encounter radiological hazards. Where radiography is planned, it is clearly announced through the IMPACT procedure and the relevant TSO, building occupants and others who may be immediately concerned are informed. If you are not informed in this way, you will still be able to identify the area where the radiography is taking place. It will be clearly cordoned off and there will be clearly visible information panels displaying telephone numbers that you can call for further information. Radiographical examinations normally take place outside working hours, between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m.

All radiographical procedures at CERN are carried out according to the internationally-accepted ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) principle, which ensures that every intervention is necessary, with radiation doses limited and optimised. Each campaign is painstakingly prepared. Nevertheless, within the marked-off area, there is a risk of exposure to very high levels of radiation, and it is therefore important to respect the safety cordon.

Remember, at CERN, we are each responsible for our own safety. If you see a cordon indicating that radiography is in progress, do not cross it. Only qualified radiation workers carrying out the inspection are authorised to do so.

If you have to cross the area for work or personal reasons – if you have parked your car on the other side, for example – call one of the phone numbers on the information panels. A qualified radiation worker will help you cross the zone safely.

Last but not least, if you have not done so already, follow the e-learning course “Radiation Protection – Awareness”, which is now obligatory for everyone working on the CERN sites.

ELENA (Extra Low ENergy Antiproton), the new antimatter deceleration ring, will soon form the link between the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) and the antimatter experiments. At present, ELENA is able to supply only the GBAR experiment, which received its first beams of antiprotons last year, but during Long Shutdown 2 (LS2), extraction lines will be installed between ELENA and the other experiments (ALPHA, ASACUSA, ATRAP and BASE).

“During the 2017/2018 extended year-end technical stop (EYETS), we were able to install the electron cooling system,” explains Gérard Tranquille, who is responsible for this essential equipment. “Even though we had to resolve a vacuum leak problem, we were able to install the ELENA ring in its nominal configuration and continue with the commissioning.” The electron cooling system makes it possible to concentrate the particle beams by reducing the beam emittance, or in other words, the transverse dimensions of the beam and its energy spread. In this way, the experiments can be supplied with denser beams, increasing their chances of trapping antiprotons.

The members of the team had to deal with several technical problems during commissioning, but they are pleased with the machine’s performance: “The last tests carried out in November were very encouraging,” explains Christian Carli, ELENA project leader. “We were able to produce antiproton beams with characteristics that were sufficiently close to the nominal values,” adds Tommy Eriksson, who is responsible for organising the machine’s commissioning. “Thanks to ELENA, the antimatter experiments will see a notable improvement in their operating conditions, as they will have the opportunity to work with beams with an energy of 0.1 MeV.”

Following the tests with beam in November, the transport team and the people in charge of the equipment, with the support of the technical coordination team, started dismantling the magnetic lines connecting the AD to the experiments in the old experiment area. “These lines are gradually being replaced by the electrostatic lines that will connect ELENA to the experiments,” explains François Butin, the project’s technical coordinator. “There’s no turning back now... but we have every faith in ELENA; we’re sure that the machine will be ready to supply very-low-energy antiproton beams after LS2,” concludes Wolfgang Bartmann, who is in charge of coordinating the design and construction of these lines.

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For more information on ELENA, see our previous articles:

• A new ring to slow down antimatter
• First antiprotons in ELENA

Registration is now open for the CERN Accelerator School’s course on Advanced Accelerator Physics, to be held in Slangerup, Denmark from 9 June to 21 June 2019.

The course will be of interest to physicists and engineers who wish to extend their knowledge on accelerator physics and technologies. The course offers core lectures in the mornings combined with hands-on tuition in the afternoons. Participants will be able to select one afternoon course from the following three: optics design, beam instrumentation and RF-measurements.

For more information and application, please visit the school website.

Tuesday 12 March 9h – 16h
CERN Building 61-1-009

Main topics:

• Presentation of our products and services in the Passive Electronics, Connectivity and Custom Products section.
• Many Design kits will be presented.
We remind you that our design kits are being filled for free. 

• Possibility of small catering on site 


For any questions, please contact Sebastien Wiederkehr: Sebastien.Wiederkehr@we-online.com; +41 795 798 299. 


Voxxed Days are a series of tech events organised by local community groups and supported by the Voxxed team. Sharing the Devoxx philosophy that content comes first, these events see both internationally renowned and local speakers converge at a wide range of locations around the world. Content on Voxxed is generated by the developer community, "from developers, for developers". Supported by local user groups, Voxxed Days CERN will offer the chance to hear from experts across a range of important topics.

If you’re a developer whose curiosity is piqued by technological developments around Java, JVM, performance, productivity, web technologies or developer practices, then this is the event for you. We promise an outstanding day filled with amazing content, all at an iconic location, at the home of the LHC.

Speakers include:

•     Dr Venkat Subramaniam
•     Robert C. Martin ("Uncle Bob")
•     Mark Reinhold
•     Holly Cummins
•     Kevlin Henney
•     Blazej Kubiak & Krzysztof Kudrynski
•     Hubert Sablonnière
•     Martin Thompson
•     Sebastian Daschner
•     Cagatay Civici
•     Monica Dinculescu
•     David Gageot
•     Anjana Vakil

Tickets for the Voxxed Day CERN are on sale now, and you can register here.

There are also a limited number of free places available for CERN personnel, which can be obtained through Indico. 

You can also follow the event on Twitter for further information, @VoxxedCERN.