Tracking and imaging elementary particles
- CERN, Geneva (Switzerland)
The Large Electron-Positron (LEP) Collider is one of the most powerful particle accelerators ever built. It smashes electrons into their antimatter counterparts, positrons, releasing as much as 100 billion electron volts of energy within each of four enormous detectors. Each burst of energy generates a spray of hundreds of elementary particles that are monitored by hundreds of thousands of sensors. In less than a second, an electronic system must sort through the data from some 50,000 electron-positron encounters, searching for just one or two head-on collisions that might lead to discoveries about the fundamental forces and the elementary particles of nature. When the electronic systems identify such a promising event, a picture of the data must be transmitted to the most ingenious image processor ever created. The device is the human brain. Computers cannot match the brain's capacity to recognize complicated patterns in the data collected by the LEP detectors. The work of understanding subnuclear events begins therefore through the visualization of objects that are trillions of times smaller than the eye can see and that move millions of times faster than the eye can follow. During the past decade, the authors and their colleagues at the European laboratory for particle physics (CERN) have attempted to design the perfect interface between the minds of physicists and the barrage of electronic signals from the LEP detectors. Using sophisticated computers, they translate raw data - 500,000 numbers from each event - into clear, meaningful images. With shapes, curves and colors, they represent the trajectories of particles, their type, their energy and many other properties.
- OSTI ID:
- 5166758
- Journal Information:
- Scientific American; (United States), Journal Name: Scientific American; (United States) Vol. 265:2; ISSN SCAMA; ISSN 0036-8733
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
BASIC INTERACTIONS
BOSONS
CERN
COMPUTERS
DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEMS
DATA PROCESSING
DESIGN
DIELECTRIC TRACK DETECTORS
ELECTRON-POSITRON INTERACTIONS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
FERMIONS
IMAGE PROCESSING
INTERACTIONS
INTERMEDIATE BOSONS
INTERMEDIATE VECTOR BOSONS
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
LEP STORAGE RINGS
LEPTON-LEPTON INTERACTIONS
LEPTONS
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
PARTICLE IDENTIFICATION
PARTICLE INTERACTIONS
PARTICLE TRACKS
PATTERN RECOGNITION
POSTULATED PARTICLES
PROCESSING
QUARKS
RADIATION DETECTORS
SHOWER COUNTERS
STORAGE RINGS
WEAK INTERACTIONS
Z NEUTRAL BOSONS