Exploring the Large Hadron Collider - CERN and the Accelerators

Michael Hauschild takes the reader of this essential back to the beginnings of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research  near Geneva, Switzerland; one of the most fascinating research centres of all, its history, its people and its accelerators. The author explains how particle accelerators work and how, starting from the first ideas, the Large Hadron Collider LHC was finally built, the world's largest particle accelerator and the world machine of today. After a stop of more than two years, the LHC was put back into operation in spring 2015 to discover the secrets of nature with higher energy than ever before.

The contents

• The CERN laboratory and accelerators
• A bit of physics - the standard model
• The first Nobel Prize: the W and Z0 bosons
• Particle accelerator - how does that work?
• The Large Hadron Collider LHC

The target groups

• Scientifically interested laymen and students
Lecturers and students of the Studium Generale and natural sciences

The Author

Michael Hauschild is a particle physicist at CERN in Geneva and has been a member of the ATLAS experimentat the Large Hadron Collider LHC since 2005. During the first long measurement period of the LHC from 2010 to 2012, he witnessed the discovery of the Higgs particle in summer 2012.