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Introduction |
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The Laboratory for High Energy Physics (LPHE) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne
is involved in several international
collaborations for research in particle physics, with present
and future experiments. This research requires ongoing
technical developments in particle detection, signal
processing electronics, and computing.
LPHE's research
programme in high energy physics is concentrated on the study
of CP violation and other rare phenomena in B decays.
The institute's main involvement is currently the design and
construction of the LHCb detector, which will record 14 TeV
proton-proton collisions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
LPHE also participates in the data taking and analysis
of the BELLE detector, currently running at KEK's asymmetric
e+e- B factory in Japan.
Recently the Laboratory joined the IceCube experiment, a neutrino detector
under construction at the South Pole.
The Laboratory is a member of the L3 and
NOMAD collaborations at CERN, and the analysis of data taken
with these two detectors (now both dismounted) is still going
on. In the recent past the Institute was also involved in the
HYPERCP experiment at Fermilab (USA) and in the UA6 and
WA42/62 experiments at CERN.
Until 2007, the Laboratory had a R&D programme for
the applications of particle physics and its experimental
techniques to imaging (for medical or bio-research purpose),
using Position Emission Tomography (PET).
LPHE's funding agencies are the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
the Swiss National Science
Foundation and FORCE (a federal fund for research at CERN).
Until the end of 2003, the Laboratory was also financed by the University
of Lausanne and the Canton de Vaud.
A brief summary of present activities:
LHCb |
BELLE |
ICECUBE,
and of past activities:
PET |
NOMAD |
L3 |
E871 |
UA6 |
Photim.
Finally, the Institute offers accademic support for CERN Ph.D. students,
involved in various R&D projects in accelerator technology and
instrumentation.
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Experiments |
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LHCb is an experiment whose purpose is to study CP
violation in the B mesons system at the future LHC collider.
LHCb at LPHE
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BELLE is an experiment at the KEK B-factory.
Its goal is to study the origin of CP violation.
BELLE at LPHE
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The IceCubeNeutrino Detector is a neutrino telescope currently under construction at the South Pole. The main goal of the experiment is to detect neutrinos in the high energy range, which spans from 1011 to about 1021 eV.
IceCube at LPHE
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PET (Positron Emission Tomography) is a medical
imaging technique that allows to investigate the biochemical activity in
living organisms using radioactive tracers.
PET at LPHE
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NOMAD is an experiment whose purpose is to
look for evidence of
neutrino oscillations. These oscillations are suggested by the difference
between expected and detected solar neutrino fluxes on earth. The experiment
is located in the CERN West Hall. It is composed of drift chambers, a
transition radiation detector and an electrophotonic calorimeter installed
inside a magnet providing a field of 0.4 T and muon detectors located
outside the magnet. Kinematic criteria will be used to recognize
oscillations from mu neutrinos to tau neutrinos.
NOMAD at LPHE
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L3 is an experiment designed to study electroweak
interactions induced in electron-positron collisions at a center-of-mass
energy of about 100 GeV (200 GeV to be achieved in the future) in the
Large Electron-Positron collider
(LEP) at CERN.
L3 at LPHE
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E871 is a Fermilab experiment to study
CP-violation in hyperon decays.
E871 at LPHE
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_____ UA6 _____
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UA6 is an internal fixed target experiment which
was installed in the CERN-SPS collider ring. It used as target a hydrogen
cluster jet and, thanks to the high density of the jet and the revolution
frequency of the stored p and pbar beams, a luminosity of the order of 10^31
cm^-2 s^-1 has been achieved. The experiment was instrumented with a two-arm
magnetic spectrometer equipped with multiwire proportional chambers and with
electromagnetic calorimeters. Electron identification could be enhanced by
transition radiation detectors.
First data was taken in 1984. Last period of data taking was in 1990 until the
phase out of the SpS collider ring.
UA6 studies, among other things:
- high pT direct photons production. These photons are directly emitted by
the interacting quarks of the protons and antiprotons. They can be used to
have a look on gluon contents of the proton and to measure the strong coupling
constant.
- pi0 production. Pi0 builds a strong background to direct photons
measurements.
- J/psi production. J/psi is a baryon (as the neutron and the proton).
The mechanism that leads to its creation is not well known; but the study of J/psi
production sheds some light on it.
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Photim was a European 'ESPRIT' project
in opto-electronic chain development. The scientific goal was the construction
of a Cherenkov telescope for cosmic gamma rays detection.
Photim at LPHE
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