Project

The CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Big Science

Code
3G0C3213
Duration
01 January 2013 → 31 December 2020
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
  • Natural sciences
    • Other biological sciences
    • Other natural sciences
 
Project description

In 2009, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful accelerator became operational,

producing mainly proton-proton collisions at multi-TeV center-of-mass energies. This allows

experiments, such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), to explore the so-far uncharted physics at

this energy scale. One of the, in the meantime world-famous results of the first LHC physics run that

recently ended, is the discovery a new particle with properties resembling those of the long-sought

Brout-Englert-Higgs boson. An additional goal of the LHC is to search for new physics phenomena and

particles that cannot be described by the well-known Standard Model in particle physics. To this end, to

extend the LHC physics reach more and more, several shutdown periods are foreseen to gradually

increase the luminosity of the accelerator. The 1st Long Shutdown has just begun and will bring the

LHC to its design luminosity and energy; a 2nd shutdown scheduled for 2018 will double the luminosity

and a 3rd around 2022 should bring the machine to the High Luminosity phase with ten times its present

design luminosity. To keep up with these luminosity increases, also the experiments need to be

upgraded. CMS is planning several upgrades, among others to its Muon System and Silicon Strip

Tracker, in which the CMS groups from the UA, UGent and VUB are involved. Here, dedicated R&D

is proposed, in preparation of the upgrades of these two subsystems during the 2nd and 3rd LHC Long

Shutdown periods.