The Large Hadron Collider

The construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been a massive endeavour spanning almost 30 years from conception to commissioning. Building the machine with the highest possible energy (7 TeV) in the existing large electron-positron (LEP) collider tunnel of 27 km circumference and with a tu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences physical, and engineering sciences, 2012-02, Vol.370 (1961), p.831-858
Main Author: Evans, Lyndon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accelerator
Caves
Collider
Cooling
Energy
Hadrons
Helium
Large Hadron Collider
Magnetic fields
Magnets
Physics
Quadrupoles
Review
Tunnels
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Summary:The construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been a massive endeavour spanning almost 30 years from conception to commissioning. Building the machine with the highest possible energy (7 TeV) in the existing large electron-positron (LEP) collider tunnel of 27 km circumference and with a tunnel diameter of only 3.8 m has required considerable innovation. The first was the development of a two-in-one magnet, where the two rings are integrated into a single magnetic structure. This compact two-in-one structure was essential for the LHC owing to the limited space available in the existing LEP collider tunnel and the cost. The second was a bold move to the use of superfluid helium cooling on a massive scale, which was imposed by the need to achieve a high (8.3 T) magnetic field using an affordable Nb-Ti superconductor.
ISSN:1364-503X
1471-2962
DOI:10.1098/rsta.2011.0453