HARP, the Hadron Production Experiment, also referred to as the PS214 experiment, at the Proton Synchrotron was a physics experiment at CERN that took data from 2000 through 2002. Its goal was to systematically study hadron production on a wide variety of nuclear targets. The data is used to help predict neutrino fluxes at experiments such as MiniBooNE and K2K, to understand the atmospheric neutrino flux, and to tune Monte Carlo simulations of particle production.
Protons of 1.5 to 15 GeV were directed at targets ranging from hydrogen to lead. Using about 300 different beam/target configurations, 420 million events were recorded. [1]
Analysis of HARP data has been carried out by two independent groups, the second group calling itself HARP-CDP for "HARP-CERN-Dubna-Protvino". This group split from the main collaboration over "a deep split of opinion over quality of work, working methods, and professional ethics" [2] [3]
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions and bosons. There are three generations of fermions, although ordinary matter is made only from the first fermion generation. The first generation consists of up and down quarks which form protons and neutrons, and electrons and electron neutrinos. The three fundamental interactions known to be mediated by bosons are electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Geneva, on the France–Switzerland border. It comprises 23 member states. Israel, admitted in 2013, is the only non-European full member. CERN is an official United Nations General Assembly observer.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.
ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of the unprecedented energy available at the LHC and observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators. ATLAS was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. It was also designed to search for evidence of theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.
The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed. It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland.
A collider is a type of particle accelerator that brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. Colliders may either be ring accelerators or linear accelerators.
Gargamelle was a heavy liquid bubble chamber detector in operation at CERN between 1970 and 1979. It was designed to detect neutrinos and antineutrinos, which were produced with a beam from the Proton Synchrotron (PS) between 1970 and 1976, before the detector was moved to the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). In 1979 an irreparable crack was discovered in the bubble chamber, and the detector was decommissioned. It is currently part of the "Microcosm" exhibition at CERN, open to the public.
The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is a particle accelerator of the synchrotron type at CERN. It is housed in a circular tunnel, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) in circumference, straddling the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, Switzerland.
T2K is a particle physics experiment studying the oscillations of the accelerator neutrinos. The experiment is conducted in Japan by the international cooperation of about 500 physicists and engineers with over 60 research institutions from several countries from Europe, Asia and North America and it is a recognized CERN experiment (RE13). T2K collected data within its first phase of operation from 2010 till 2021. The second phase of data taking (T2K-II) is expected to start in 2023 and last until commencement of the successor of T2K – the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment in 2027.
The NA58 experiment, or COMPASS is a 60-metre-long fixed-target experiment at the M2 beam line of the SPS at CERN. The experimental hall is located at the CERN North Area, close to the French village of Prévessin-Moëns. The experiment is a two-staged spectrometer with numerous tracking detectors, particle identification and calorimetry. The physics results are extracted by recording and analysing the final states of the scattering processes. The versatile set-up, the use of different targets and particle beams allow the investigation of various processes. The main physics goals are the investigation of the nucleon spin structure and hadron spectroscopy. The collaboration consists of 220 physicists from 13 different countries, involving 28 universities and research institutes.
The Big European Bubble Chamber (BEBC) is a large detector formerly used to study particle physics at CERN. The chamber body, a stainless-steel vessel, was filled with 35 cubic metres of superheated liquid hydrogen, liquid deuterium, or a neon-hydrogen mixture, whose sensitivity was regulated by means of a movable piston weighing 2 tons. The liquids at typical operation temperatures around 27 K were placed under overpressure of about 5 standard atmospheres (510 kPa). The piston expansion, synchronized with the charged particle beam crossing the chamber volume, caused a rapid pressure drop; in consequence the liquid reached its boiling point. During each expansion, charged particles ionized the atoms of the liquid as they passed through it and the energy deposited by them initiated boiling along their path, leaving trails of tiny bubbles. These tracks were photographed by the five cameras mounted on top of the chamber. The stereo photographs were subsequently scanned and all events finally evaluated by a team of scientists. After each expansion, the pressure was increased again to stop the boiling. The bubble chamber was then ready again for a new cycle of beam exposure.
NA61/SHINE is a particle physics experiment at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The experiment studies the hadronic final states produced in interactions of various beam particles with a variety of fixed nuclear targets at the SPS energies.
The NA62 experiment is a fixed-target particle physics experiment in the North Area of the SPS accelerator at CERN. The experiment was approved in February 2007. Data taking began in 2015, and the experiment is expected to become the first in the world to probe the decays of the charged kaon with probabilities down to 10−12. The experiment's spokesperson is Cristina Lazzeroni. The collaboration involves 333 individuals from 30 institutions and 13 countries around the world.
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The Enhanced NeUtrino BEams from kaon Tagging or ENUBET is an ERC funded project that aims at producing an artificial neutrino beam in which the flavor, flux and energy of the produced neutrinos are known with unprecedented precision.
FASER is one of the nine particle physics experiments in 2022 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is designed to both search for new light and weakly coupled elementary particles, and to detect and study the interactions of high-energy collider neutrinos. In March 2023, FASER reported the first observation of collider neutrinos.
An accelerator neutrino is a human-generated neutrino or antineutrino obtained using particle accelerators, in which beam of protons is accelerated and collided with a fixed target, producing mesons which then decay into neutrinos. Depending on the energy of the accelerated protons and whether mesons decay in flight or at rest it is possible to generate neutrinos of a different flavour, energy and angular distribution. Accelerator neutrinos are used to study neutrino interactions and neutrino oscillations taking advantage of high intensity of neutrino beams, as well as a possibility to control and understand their type and kinematic properties to a much greater extent than for neutrinos from other sources.
Kamal Benslama is a Moroccan-Swiss Experimental Particle Physicist. He is a Research Professor and a Senior Lecturer at Towson University. He worked on the ATLAS experiment, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland, which is considered as the largest experiment in the history of physical science.
The Scattering and Neutrino Detector (SND) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN, is an experiment built for the detection of the collider neutrinos. The primary goal of SND is to measure the p+p --> +X process and search for the feebly interacting particles. It will be operational from 2022, during the LHC-Run 3 (2022-2024). SND will be installed in an empty tunnel- TI18 that links the LHC and Super Proton Synchrotron, 480m away from the ATLAS experiment interaction point in the fast forward region and along the beam collision axis.
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