The CMS experiment

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The CMS Times - Weekly Online Newsletter

CMS is one of the two general purpose detectors for the proton-proton collider of CERN, the LHC.
The main purposes of the LHC are to study the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking in electroweak interactions and to explore physics beyond the Standard Model. LHC is definitively a discovery machine! It will nevertheless also allow physicists to study Standard Model processes more deeply as for example top quark physics, as well as heavy ion collisions at unprecedented energy.
CMS is an international collaboration in which Belgium and in particular Brussels (ULB-VUB) has an important participation. The Brussels group has participated in the contruction of the endcap tracker detector of CMS. The Brussels teams were involved in the study of the CMS physics potential using simulations, and are now analysing the fresh LHC data at the energy of 7 TeV in the proton-proton centre of mass.
The CMS Brussels groups are very actif in the high energy data analysis in two ways : the test of the Standard Model predictions at the high energy frontier and the search for new physics beyond the Standard Model. This studies are performed in two different final states involving : (i) high energy electrons (HEEP group), and (ii) top quarks. Recently the HEEP group developed a new research activity on QCD, in particular in the study of strange particle production and study of the underlying event. The links to the two research groups are given at the top of the left frame.


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History of the LHC First beams and colisions

High energy data started on 30th March, expected to run till end of year 2011
First 7 TeV collisions

First beams observed in 2010 :
First beams of 2010

Start of the LHC : 06 and 07 November 2009
first beam splash event seen by CMS