CERN Accelerating science

A word from the Head of the EP department - December 2018

Dear Colleagues, dear Members of the EP Department and CERN Users,

Welcome to the last EP newsletter of 2018. This year has been another great year for CERN. The LHC run has broken again all records, both for the proton-proton run, as well as for the heavy ion run in the last month. The LHC experiments have now accumulated an enormous data set, which will keep them busy analysing for some time. With the last beam dump on December 10, Run 2 has finished and we entered Long Shutdown 2. This means there will be no beam for the next two years. It is the period many colleagues have worked towards, when preparing the components for the upgrade of their experiments. In particular ALICE and LHCb will undertake many changes to almost all of their detector components. You will find more details on the planned upgrades in this newsletter.

Another article in the newsletter explains another success of 2018: the completion of the large ProtoDUNE single-phase liquid argon detector. Perfectly on schedule the detector became operational and first tracks were observed using the SPS beam. Also just in time for this newsletter we have completed our study for Strategic R&D on Technologies for Future Experiments. In two workshops and many meetings we have defined what we believe are the crucial EP R&D lines for detectors, electronics and software for all future experiments. The article in the newsletter gives an overview and links you to the full document.

You will find many more articles, interviews and the introduction of new staff and fellows in EP in this newsletter. Take your time during the holiday break to enjoy reading them.

Finally, I would like to wish all of you Happy Holidays and a very Successful Year 2019! Recharge your batteries during the break and enjoy your time with your family.

 

Manfred Krammer

EP Department Head