Good News from CERN

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I would like to share with you the good news from CERN that their mission has been accomplished! For further proof of that please continue to read Rolf Heuer's explanation below. 

Unfortunately, it is somewhat outside my expertise, so please address all questions and arguments to him, Rolf.Heuer@CERN.ch or go to the CERN public web pages for more info.

"When we started running the LHC at the end of March, we set ourselves the objective of reaching a luminosity of 10³² by the end of 2010 proton running. Last night, we achieved that goal. The beams that went in at around 2:00am, were colliding with a luminosity of 1.01 × 10³² by 3:38am in both ATLAS and CMS, and had delivered an integrated luminosity of over 2 inverse picobarns to ATLAS, CMS and LHCb by midday today.

It’s a great achievement by all concerned to reach this important milestone with over two weeks to spare.
The remainder of this year’s proton running will be devoted to maximising the LHC 2010 data set and preparing for 2011 proton running before we switch to lead ions in November.

The significance of this milestone can’t be underestimated, since it is a necessary step on the way to the larger goal of delivering an integrated luminosity of one inverse femtobarn to the experiments by the end of 2011.

That’s the amount of data we need to ensure that if nature has put new physics in our path at the LHC’s current collision energy, we’ll have a good chance of seeing it.

At the moment, we’re running the LHC with 248 bunches per beam in a configuration that allows us to go much higher. As 2011 proton running gets underway early next year we’ll continue increasing the number of bunches, since a factor of two or so more luminosity is still needed if we’re to reach our one inverse femtobarn goal.

That, however, is for next year. In the meantime, the objective we set ourselves for this year was realistic, but tough, and it’s very gratifying to see it achieved in such fine style."

Rolf Heuer (CERN)