Aiming particle beams: CERN video shows how collisions happen inside the LHC
Pointing two beams at each other is not that simple. The third episode of CERN's series "Particle Collisions" looks inside the LHC and explains why the collision rate is set to rise further.
Photo: Maximilien Brice (CERN) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · CERN · youtube.com
The CERN research centre near Geneva released the third episode of its explainer series "Particle Collisions" on 23 October. Titled "Inside a particle accelerator", it looks at how particles actually collide in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). According to CERN, this sounds simple – point two beams at each other – but the beams have a complex structure and must be focused with extraordinary precision.
The video shows how the beams in the LHC are structured and what determines how many collisions happen each second. It also covers the challenges of higher luminosity, which determines the collision rate, and why CERN wants to push it even further with the upgrade to the High-Luminosity LHC (HiLumi LHC).
The series builds step by step: the first episode asked why so many collisions are needed, the second explained how they are counted and how the number of expected particles is predicted.