After a couple of days of postponements, the largest particle accelerator in the world, the Lhc (Large Hadron Collider), the one that allowed the detection of the Higgs boson to be detected again at CERN. After a technical break of more than three years, during which the car was upgraded, the accelerator is again active and two beams of protons have started to circulate in the 27 kilometer ring.
The accelerator, in which Italy participates with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn), was shut down in December 2018 precisely to make it even more powerful, but the operations were also delayed by the Covid 19 emergency which has the upgrading and maintenance work was delayed.
Two beams of protons traveled, in opposite directions, a full revolution of the low-energy ring, the same with which they were injected, equal to 450 billion electron volts (450 GeV), in opposite directions.
“These first particle beams represent the successful restart of the accelerator after the great work that was done during the long hiatus,” notes Rhodri Jones, head of the particle beam operations.
The first phase of a complex operation
Restarting will be the first important step to see the LHC at work again. In this first phase, in fact, the particle beams will circulate in the accelerator ring at the injection energy and it will be necessary to wait from June to July for them to be accelerated and the machine to enter full operation.