New Investigations in Particle Physics:
Large Hadron Collider
Escola T` cnica Superior en Enginyeria,
e
Universitat Rovira i Virgili,
Av. Pa¨sos Catalans 26,
ı
E-43007 Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain
Abstract— There are some high impact predictions in physics
that have not been tested yet because the necessary tools were
not available to scientific community. It is necessary to test
these predictions in order to accept or deny different theories of
universe origin and composition. To achieve it, scientists needed
a large particle accelerator.
LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is the biggest and most so-
phisticated particle accelerator ever made. It is a 27Km ring
underneath the Franco-Swiss border devoted to research in the
physics of matter at an infinitely small scale and high-energy
physics by producing high-energy collitions of small particles. It
will be used to test various predictions of high-energy physics,
including the existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson. Although
these experiments are expected to bring on important benefits to
humanity, some scientists have serious doubts about the safety
of particle collisions because it might produce microscopic black
holes, strange matter, etc. that may cause Earth destruction.
Fig. 1. Visual map of the situation of the LHC
Keywords
CERN, Particle phisics, Higgs boson, Black Hole, Computing,
Matter, Antimatter, Universe, Atom, Quark, Cosmic rays, beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes,
Safety, Supersymetry which are kept at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around
the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field, achieved using
superconducting electromagnets. These are built from coils of
I. I NTRODUCTION special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state,
For the past few decades, physicists have been able to efficiently conducting electricity without resistance or loss of
describe with increasing detail the fundamental particles that energy. This requires chilling the magnets to about -271◦ C (a
make up the Universe and the interactions between them. temperature colder than outer space nearby the absolute zero).
This understanding is encapsulated in the Standard Model of For this reason, much of the accelerator is connected to a
particle physics [1], but it contains gaps and cannot tell us distribution system of liquid helium, which cools the magnets,
the whole story. To fill in the missing knowledge requires as well as to other supply services.
experimental data, and the next big step to achieving this is Thousands of magnets of different varieties and sizes are
with Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [29]. used to direct the beams around the accelerator. These include
1.232 dipole magnets of 15 m length which are used to bend
A. Definition the beams, and 392 quadrupole magnets, each 57 m long, to
LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a particle accelerator built focus the beams. Just prior to collision, another type of magnet
by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) [2]. is used to “squeeze” the particles closer together to increase
It mainly consists of a 27 km ring of superconducting magnets the chances of collisions.
with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy Once or twice a day, as the protons are accelerated from 450
of the particles along the way. It is buried between 50 and GeV to 7 TeV, the field of the superconducting dipole magnets
175 meters below ground near the border between France and will be increased from 0.54 to 8.3 Tesla (T). The protons will
Switzerland, northeast of the city of Geneva. each have an energy of 7 TeV, giving a total collision energy
Inside the tunnel opposite hadron beams will be collided of 14 TeV. At this energy the protons have a Lorentz factor [5]
at speeds up to 99,99% the speed of light, with the intention of about 7.500 and move at about 99.9999991% of the speed
of testing various predictions of particle physics, including the of light. It will take less than 90 microsecond (µs) for a proton
existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson [3] and of the large to travel once around the main ring (a speed of about 11.000
family of new particles predicted by supersymmetry [4]. The revolutions per second).

LHC have inside six detectors located underground in large On the other hand there is the antimatter [8], it is like
caverns excavated at the LHC’s intersection point (Fig. 1). a twin version of matter, but with opposite electric charge.
Two of them, the ATLAS experiment and the Compact Muon At the birth of the Universe, equal amounts of matter and
Solenoid (CMS), are large and its purpose is to act as particle antimatter should have been produced in the Big Bang. But
detectors. A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) and when matter and antimatter particles meet, they annihilate each
LHCb have more specific roles and the last two TOTEM and other, transforming into energy. Somehow, a tiny fraction of
LHCf are very much smaller and are for very specialized matter must have survived to form the Universe we live in
research (Fig. 2). today, with hardly any antimatter left. The LHCb experiment
All the controls for the accelerator, its services and tech- will be looking for differences between matter and antimatter
nical infrastructure are housed under one roof at the CERN to help answer some questions. Previous experiments have
Control Center. From here, the beams inside the LHC will be already observed a tiny behavioural difference, but what has
made to collide at four locations around the accelerator ring, been seen so far is not nearly enough to account for the
corresponding to the positions of the particle detectors. apparent matterantimatter imbalance in the Universe.
Finally there is the ALICE experiment that will use the
LHC to recreate conditions similar to those just after the Big
Bang, in particular to analyze the properties of the quark-gluon
plasma [9].
C. LHC Computing
The Large Hadron Collider will produce roughly 15
PetaBytes (15 million GigaBytes) of data annually. Thousands
of scientists around the world want to access and analyze this
data, so CERN is collaborating with institutions in 33 different
countries to operate a distributed computing and data storage
infrastructure: the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) [10].
LHC Computing Grid is being constructed to handle the
massive amounts of data produced by the Large Hadron
Collider. It incorporates both private fiber optic cable links and
Fig. 2. Conceptual diagram of the detectors and experiments in LHC. It
descibes the main beam pipes in which beams will be accelerated. Beams existing high-speed portions of the public Internet, enabling
first have a preacceleration stage at PS, then they acquire higher speed at SPS data transfer from CERN to academic institutions around the
and in the final loop they reach a speed similar to light one. In this loop there world.
are the main detectors.
B. Why LHC?
The unprecedented energy it achieves may even reveal some
unexpected results that no one has ever thought of.
It is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive
Higgs boson, the last unobserved particle among those predict-
ed by the Standard Model. The verification of the existence
of the Higgs boson would shed light on the mechanism of
electroweak symmetry breaking [6], through which the parti-
cles of the Standard Model are thought to acquire their mass. Fig. 3. Data Transfer of the LHC Experiments
In addition to the Higgs boson, new particles predicted by
possible extensions of the Standard Model might be produced Data from the LHC experiments is distributed around the
at the LHC. The ATLAS and CMS experiments will be globe, with a primary backup recorded on tape at CERN.
actively searching for signs of this elusive particle. After initial processing, this data is distributed to eleven large
Another subject of investigation is dark matter and dark computer centers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the
energy [7] , that is believed to make up the major proportion Netherlands, the Nordic countries, Spain, Taipei, the UK, and
of the Universe, but they are incredibly difficult to detect and two sites in the USA with sufficient storage capacity for a
study, other than through the gravitational forces they exert. large fraction of the data, and with round-the-clock support
Investigating the nature of dark matter and dark energy is for the computing grid. These so-called “Tier-1” centers make
one of the biggest challenges today in the fields of particle the data available to over 120 “Tier-2” centers for specific
physics and cosmology and the ATLAS and CMS experiments analysis tasks. Individual scientists can then access the LHC
will also look for supersymmetric particles to test a likely data from their home country, using local computer clusters
hypothesis for the make-up of dark matter. or even individual PCs (Fig. 3).

The distributed computing project LHC@home was started and neutrons, surrounded by a cloud of electrons. Protons and
to support the construction and calibration of the LHC. The neutrons are in turn made of quarks which are bound together
project uses the BOINC platform, enabling everybody with by other particles called gluons. This incredibly strong bond
an Internet connection to have scientific projects use their means that isolated quarks have never been found.
computer idle time, to simulate how particles will travel in Collisions in the LHC will generate temperatures more than
the tunnel. With this information, the scientists will be able to 100.000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun [11]. Physicists
determine how the magnets should be calibrated to gain the hope that under these conditions, the protons and neutrons
most stable “orbit” of the beams in the ring. will “melt”, freeing the quarks from their bonds with the
gluons. This should create a state of matter called quark-gluon
D. Cost plasma, which probably existed just after the Big Bang when
The total cost of the project is expected to be C3.2 – 6.4 the Universe was still extremely hot. The ALICE collaboration
billion. The construction of LHC was approved in 1.995 with a plans to study the quark-gluon plasma as it expands and cools,
budget of 2.6 billion Swiss francs (C1.6 billion), with another observing how it progressively gives rise to the particles that
210 Swiss million francs (C140 million) towards the cost of constitute the matter of our Universe today [12].
the experiments. However, cost over-runs, estimated in a major
review in 2001 at around 480 million Swiss francs ( C300
million) for the accelerator, and 50 million Swiss francs ( C30
million) for the experiments, along with a reduction in CERN’s
budget, pushed the completion date from 2005 to April 2007.
The superconducting magnets were responsible for 180 million
Swiss francs ( C120 million) of the cost increase. There were
also engineering difficulties encountered while building the
underground cavern for the Compact Muon Solenoid, in part
due to faulty parts loaned to CERN by fellow laboratories
Argonne National Laboratory, Fermilab, and KEK. LHC is
funded by and built in collaboration with over 10.000 scientists
and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of
universities and laboratories around the world.
II. C URRENT EXPERIMENTS AND DETECTORS Fig. 4. Cut view of the ALICE detector
Due to the magnitude of the experiments it is necessary
to have the most accurate detectors/sensors possible with the 2) Topics of investigation:
current technology. It is prior to ensure that all the data • Know what happens to matter when it is heated to
generated with this detectors/sensors will be stored in a safe 100.000 times the temperature at the center of the Sun
environment. After this big amount of data will be analyzed • Study the reason why protons and neutrons weight 100
and computed in LHC grid computing infrastructure. times more than the quarks they are made of.
At the following sections there are described each sensor, • Study and prove if the quarks inside the protons and
how it work, topics of investigation related and the main neutrons can be freed
technical specifications: 3) Technical specifications:
• Size: 26 m long, 16 m high, 16 m wide
A. ALICE
• Weight: 10.000 tonnes
ALICE is the acronym for A Large Ion Collider Experiment, • Design: central barrel plus single arm forward muon
one of the largest experiments in the world devoted to research spectrometer
in the physics of matter at an infinitely small scale (Fig. • Location: St Genis-Pouilly, France.
4). Hosted at CERN, this project involves an international
collaboration of more than 1.000 physicists, engineers and B. ATLAS
technicians, including around 200 graduate students, from 105 ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is one of two general-
physics institutes in 30 countries across the world [11]. purpose detectors at the LHC. This detector will search for new
1) How does it work?: For the ALICE experiment, the LHC discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordi-
will collide lead ions to recreate the conditions just after the narily high energy[13]. The difference between ATLAS and
Big Bang under laboratory conditions. The data obtained will CMS is that they have adopted radically different technical
allow physicists to study a state of matter known as quark- solutions and designs for their detectors magnet systems to
gluon plasma, which is believed to have existed soon after the ensure and confirm the data obtained with these detectors.
Big Bang. 1) How does it work?: When the proton beams produced
All ordinary matter in todays Universe is made up of by the Large Hadron Collider interact in the center of the
atoms. Each atom contains a nucleus composed of protons detector, a variety of different particles with a broad range

of energies may be produced. Rather than focusing on a
particular physical process, ATLAS is designed to measure the
broadest possible range of signals. This is intended to ensure
that, whatever form any new physical processes or particles
might take, ATLAS will be able to detect them and measure
their properties. Experiments at earlier colliders (Tevatron and
Large Electron-Positron Collider) were designed based on a
similar philosophy. However, the unique challenges of the
Large Hadron Colliderits unprecedented energy and extremely
high rate of collisionsrequire ATLAS to be larger and more
complex than any detector ever built.
The ATLAS detector consists of four major components
• Inner tracker measures the momentum of each charged
particle
• Calorimeter measures the energies carried by the particles
Fig. 5. Cut view of the CMS detector
• Muon spectrometer identifies and measures muons
• Magnet system bending charged particles for momentum
measurement
short-lived particles which could give clues about how nature
The interactions in the ATLAS detectors will create an behaves at a fundamental level, fly out and into the detector
enormous dataflow managed with a trigger system which (Fig. 5).
selects 100 interesting events per second out of 1.000 million Each particle that emerges is like a piece of a puzzle,
others, a data acquisition system that is going to channel the with some of these pieces breaking up further as they travel
data from the detectors to the storage and finally a computer away from the collision. Each leaves a trace in the detector
system, the LHC grid computing system. and CMSs job is to gather up information about every one -
2) Topics of investigation: Using this detector and analyz- perhaps 20, 100 or even 1.000 puzzle tracks - so that physicists
ing the data, scientists will be able to investigate about: can put the jigsaw back together and see the full picture of
• Basic forces that have shaped our universe since the what happened at the heart of the collision.
beginning of time and that will determine its fate. To do this, CMS consists of layers of detector material
• Possible origin of mass that exploit the different properties of particles to catch and
• Extra dimensions of space [14] measure the energy or momentum of each one. New particles
• Microscopic black holes discovered in CMS will be typically unstable and rapidly
• Evidences for dark matter candidates in the universe, etc. transform into a cascade of lighter, more stable and better-
3) Technical specifications: understood particles.
• Size: 46 m long, 25 m high and 25 m wide. The It may seem strange that to record the Universes tiniest
ATLAS detector is the largest volume particle detector constituents it is needed the worlds most powerful machines
ever constructed. and detectors. But the detector needs to be big because the
• Weight: 7.000 tonnes particles flying out of the collisions have such high energies
• Design: barrel plus end caps [17] that it takes big distances to absorb them. And the higher
• Location: Meyrin, Switzerland. the energy, the greater the amount of material needed.
A bigger detector also means the possibility of obtaining
C. CMS more accurate measurements. To measure the momentum of
CMS (Compact Muon Selenoid) is a high-energy physics a particle CMS tracks its path through a magnetic field, as
that uses a general-purpose detector to investigate a wide range the greater the momentum the less it bends within it. The
of physics, including the search for the Higgs boson, extra bigger the detector, the more measurements can be taken
dimensions, and particles that could make up dark matter[14]. in “tracking” the particle, meaning more accuracy in the
Although it has the same scientific goals as the ATLAS momentum calculation.
experiment, it uses different technical solutions and design of As this measurement gets harder with more energetic par-
its detector magnet system to achieve these. ticles, to maintain the required accuracy it is needed a strong
1) How does it work?: The LHC smashes groups of protons magnetic field to bend the paths as much as possible. This
together at close to the speed of light: 40 million times per brings with it other size requirements, as the field needs to be
second and with seven times the energy of the most powerful guided and contained by an iron “return yoke”. The amount
accelerators built up to now [16]. Many of these will just of iron grows in size in proportion with the magnetic field, so
be glancing blows but some will be head on collisions and for the 4 Tesla CMS magnetic field, 100.000 times stronger
very energetic. When this happens some of the energy of than that of the Earth [18], it is needed to use 12.000 tonnes
the collision is turned into mass and previously unobserved, of iron.

2) Topics of investigation: E. TOTEM
• Search for the Higgs boson The TOTEM (TOTal Elastic and diffractive cross section
• Extra dimensions Measurement) experiment studies forward particles to focus
• Particles that could make up dark matter on physics that is not accessible to the general-purpose exper-
• Know what is the Universe really made of and what iments. Among a range of studies, it will measure, in effect,
forces act within is and study what gives everything the size of the proton and also monitor accurately the LHC’s
substance luminosity.
• Measure the properties of previously discovered particles 1) How does it work?: TOTEM must be able to detect
with unprecedented precision, and be on the lookout for particles produced very close to the LHC beams. It will in-
completely new, unpredicted phenomena clude detectors housed in specially designed vacuum chambers
3) Technical Specifications: called ’Roman pots’, which are connected to the beam pipes
in the LHC. Eight Roman pots will be placed in pairs at
• Size: 21 m long, 15 m wide and 15 m high.
four locations near the collision point of the CMS experiment.
• Weight: 12.500 tonnes
Therefore, it shares intersection point IP5 with the Compact
• Design: barrel plus end caps
Muon Solenoid or CMS [19].
• Location: Cessy, France.
Although the two experiments are scientifically indepen-
D. LHCb dent, TOTEM will complement the results obtained by the
CMS detector and by the other LHC experiments overall (Fig.
The LHCb (standing for “Large Hadron Collider beauty” 6).
where “beauty” refers to the bottom quark) experiment is
another of the six particle physics detector experiments built
on the LHC. LHCb is a specialist b-physics experiment, partic-
ularly aimed at measuring the parameters of CP violation [30]
in the interactions of b-hadrons (heavy particles containing a
bottom quark).
1) How does it work?: The aim of the LHCb experiment is
to record the decay of particles containing b and anti-b quarks,
collectively known as B mesons. The experiments 4,500 tonne
detector is specifically designed to filter out these particles and
the products of their decay.
Rather than flying out in all directions, B mesons formed by
the colliding proton beams (and the particles they decay into)
stay close to the line of the beam pipe, and this is reflected in
the design of the detector. Other LHC experiments surround
the entire collision point with layers of sub-detectors, like an
onion, but the LHCb detector stretches for 20 meters along the
beam pipe, with its sub-detectors stacked behind each other
like books on a shelf. Fig. 6. Cut view of the TOTEM detector
Each one of LHCbs sub-detectors specializes in measuring
a different characteristic of the particles produced by colliding 2) Topics of investigation:
protons. Collectively, the detectors components gather infor- • total cross section
mation about the identity, trajectory, momentum and energy of • elastic scattering
each particle generated, and can single out individual particles • diffractive processes
from the billions that spray out from the collision point. 3) Technical specifications:
2) Topics of investigation: • Size: 440 m long, 5 m high and 5 m wide
• CP violation: violation of the postulated CP symmetry of • Weight: 20 tonnes
the laws of physics, it plays an important role in theories • Design: Roman pot and GEM detectors and cathode strip
of cosmology that attempt to explain the dominance of chambers
matter over antimatter in the present Universe. • Location: Cessy, France (near CMS)
• Rare decays
F. LHCF
3) Technical Specifications:
The LHCf (Large Hadron Collider forward) is a specific-
• Size: 21 m long, 10 m high and 13 m wide purpose experiment that uses forward particles created inside
• Weight: 5600 tonnes the LHC as a source to simulate cosmic rays in laboratory
• Design: forward spectrometer with planar detectors conditions. The LHCf is intended to measure the energy and
• Location: Ferney-Voltaire, France. numbers of neutral pions produced by the collider.

1) How does it work?: Because its aim is to study the
particles generated in the “forward” region of collisions,
those almost directly in line with the colliding proton beams.
Therefore it consists of two detectors, 140 m on either side of
an intersection point.
Because of this large distance, it can co-exist with a more
conventional detector surrounding the intersection point, and
shares IP1 with the much larger general-purpose ATLAS
experiment.
2) Topics of investigation:
• Cosmic rays are naturally occurring charged particles
from outer space that constantly bombard the Earth’s
atmosphere. They collide with nuclei in the upper at-
mosphere, leading to a cascade of particles that reaches
ground level. Studying how collisions inside the LHC Fig. 7. Representation of a black hole
cause similar cascades of particles will help scientists to
interpret and calibrate large-scale cosmic-ray experiments
that can cover thousands of kilometers. 2) If this collapse does not stabilize, it can reach up to the
• This will hopefully help explain the origin of ultra high point where it is thought a black hole.
energy cosmic rays. Black holes does not emit any light so they are detected
3) Technical specifications: according to the theory of relativity of Albert Einstein, which
• Size: two detectors, each measures 30 cm long, 80 cm explains that all body generates a gravity according its matter,
high, 10 cm wide causing the beam of light to swerve when passing near it. In
• Weight: 40 kg each consequence, an object with gravity so huge as a black hole
• Location: Meyrin, Switzerland (near ATLAS) is diverting all light rays that pass far enough for him to not
be attracted [26] (Fig. 7).
III. DANGERS AND POSSIBLES CONSEQUENCES
Then, a black hole causes a halo of light refracted around
A. Introduction them.
The creation of the LHC has risen very stir, both in the 1) With the previously information, how can the LHC make
scientific community as the mankind. In the first, due to the a black hole?: The scientists that work in the LHC aims to
expected possibilities that can give them to study the matter create micro black holes also known as quantum mechanics
and advance knowledge about it. And also the media spread black holes. Ephemeral holes that extinct in micro seconds,
the possible but remote posibility that some disasters can occur but the theory bases in the possibility that it can stabilize and
due to these experiments. then they progressively increase its mass and will be able to
The media has explained the dangers that can occur in the devour the entire planet [28].
LHC, such as those related to the recreation of cosmic rays 2) How a micro black hole creates?: The LHC aims to
and the possible creation of micro black holes, strangelets, accelerate subatomic particles (Hadrons) to a speed near to
vacuum bubbles and magnetic monopoles. speed of light (c) and make it collide. These particles contain
Bellow we will explain the two most remarkable theories, barions [21], a type of matter that, among its features, contains
explaining his nature, how can be created and what are the that increments its mass in relation with its speed, so to making
possible dangers about it. these particles travel at speeds near to c greatly increases its
mass creating a micro black hole.
B. Create a micro black hole
3) What possibilities exist that these stabilize?: We have to
A black hole is just incredibly dense matter causing such a accept that theoretical physics contemplates the possibility that
high gravity that any particles can not escape from, not even these may be stabilizing, but under specific conditions these
the photons that make up light. are not possible. Inside the collider there are not subatomic
There are several theories about the creation of super-dense particles close enough to be absorbed by the micro black hole
matter but the most accepted among the scientific community so it can not grow to stabilize. Also the amount of energy
and the mankind is made by American physicist Stephen needed to accelerate subatomic matter at the same speed that
Hawking, in particular in his book “Black Holes and the hadrons is near to infinity [26], [27].
history of time” [25] When a giant star ends his energy, it
shuts down, it can autocollapse because of its own gravity, C. The creation of stable exotic matter (strangelets)
causing it maintain its mass, but this is much more dense, this The composition of an atom a nucleus of protons and
process may finished in two ways: neutrons surrounded by a mesh of electrons. According to the
1) The collapse can stabilize itself in becoming the creation recent investigations, they are composed of two subparticles
of a white dwarf [20], a small star but very bright. types, the Quarks [22] and Leptons [23], the first type is

combined to form the particles in the nucleus and the second improve our knowledge of universe nature. In a less concep-
type form the electrons. tual point of view, are expected important technological and
There are two types of Quarks: the Up Quarks (u) and the scientific advances derived from the results of the experiments
Down Quarks(d). Different combinations of them generates in the LHC.
neutrons and protons. On the other hand, we have the controversy of the safety of
The enormous variety of Hadrons observed last years, this experiments. Some scientists have shown their fear of the
forces scientists to expect the existence of more types of possible catastrophic consequences, so scientific community is
Quarks. American physicist Murray Gell-Mann theorized on not completely sure that there is no danger derived from the
the possibility of the existence of a third set of quarks, later LHC experiments. These investigations have a risk that not
called Strange Quark (s), with a mass 15 times higher than everybody wants to take.
the other two types. In conclusion, the results from these experiments are going
Then, strange matter could be defined as the matter formed to open our eyes to a new way of understanding the universe
by the composition of strange quarks. But this type of matter as a whole and each one of its components. So scientists
has non-metastable [24] links, so it decays immediately in Up will be able to know more about the big bang, light, gravity,
and Down Quarks type (Fig. 8). magnetism, etc. and, in the future, transfer this knowledge in
new technologies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Partial support by the University Rovira i Virgili (Library
service) and CERN scientists is acknowledged.
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