After long months of preparations, the Beam Radiation, Instrumentation, and Luminosity (BRIL) group has completed the installation of three instruments dedicated to the measurement of luminosity and beam conditions: the Beam Condition Monitor “Fast…
In the LHC, groups of 100 billion protons collide 25 million times every second. But most of these protons miss, so each time we point the protons at each other doesn't give us 100 million proton-proton collisions. In fact, collisions are much,…
When the LHC is sending billions of protons at each other millions of times per second, it’s important to know just how many of them actually are colliding, both so that the LHC can optimize its operations to produce the most collisions possible,…
When the Large Hadron Collider is in operation, the cavern containing the CMS detector is an extremely inhospitable place, due to the high-energy radiation produced by the collisions. Even after a LHC fill finishes, some residual radioactivity can…