Despite the rather challenging circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CMS GEM (Gas Electron Multiplier) team has been working against all odds to complete the installation of the very first GEM station (GE1/1) in CMS. With the completion of one…
Since late May, with the incremental re-opening of CERN’s facilities, members of the CMS GEM project have been hard at work restarting the laboratory activities in preparation for the continued efforts towards the GE1/1 chambers installation. Made…
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Muon System is undergoing major upgrades during Long Shutdown 2 (LS2), preparing for the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). The Large Hadron Collider will be upgraded to significantly increase the luminosity (frequency of…
The CMS magnet, one of the largest superconducting magnets in the world, with the largest stored energy, has been warmed up in April-May 2020 in order to perform an intervention on the vacuum pumping system.
The magnet is a 220-ton cylinder cooled…
During the early months of 2020, as the COVID-19 threat increased, CMS activity was adapted to gradually transfer responsibility to locally resident collaborators. LS2 work was accelerated in the experimental hall, so as to reach a critical LS2…
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,…
The CMS electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) measures the energy of electrons and photons produced in the LHC collisions with extreme precision. It includes, as main active element, 75848 scintillating crystals made of lead tungstate, a material that…
The CMS detector is going through multiple maintenance works during the LHC Long Shutdown 2 (LS2), the first year of which is approaching its end. The beginning of 2019 saw the CMS Tracker Pixel detector extraction that is now stored in a clean room…
With the connection of the final cable on October 4, CMS completed the installation of new on-detector electronics for the Hadron Calorimeter (HCAL) barrel detector.
Following a series of upgrades to the electronics of various HCAL subdetectors…
On July 25th, 2019, the very first GEM superchambers were installed into the CMS YE- endcap as part of the newest CMS muon subsystem, GE1/1. And while this was a fantastic accomplishment worth celebrating, it was only the beginning of the story.…
As part of the LHC Long Shutdown 2 (LS2) activities at CMS, the CMS Muon Cathode Strip Chamber (CSC) subsystem is having its electronics upgraded in the chambers closest to the beam line. This is done in anticipation of challenges it will face when…
The CMS Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) subsystem will form an extra layer of detectors, along with the Cathode Strip Chambers (CSC) layers, closest to the beam. The GEM's ability to cope with a very high particle rate will greatly improve muon…