LHC


LHC, Particles Books


The Large Hadron Collider

Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe

Martin Beech, CENTRAL 539.7376 B4143L 2010


LHC is one of my favorite machines; micrometer precision at kilometer scale, at 0.999999991 of the speed of light. The stored proton energy is a tiny fraction of a launch loop rotor, but in most other ways it far exceeds the necessary precision, drag, and control accuracy necessary for a launch loop or power loop ambit. Launch loops could use superconducting magnets, but the expense and risk is unnecessary for the ambits, ordinary iron and copper electromagnets will suffice for a 1.5 Tesla deflection field. 4 Tesla high field superconducting magnets for the vertical deflectors could reduce the ocean depth of those magnets from hundreds to tens of meters.

The Beech book was written soon after the 2008 September 10 turnon and the September 19 sector 3-4 magnet quench, which vented 1000 kg of helium and delayed restart until 2010, with full power operation (and full magnet field strength) delayed until 2011. Thus, most of the story, and the detection of the Higgs, occured after this book went to press. So most of the book is about related physics.

. The project does not use the graphics coprocessor (GPU), which would be more energy efficient.