CERN

CERN is the European Organization for Particle Physics Research, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated on the border between France and Switzerland, just west of Geneva. The convention establishing it was signed on September 29, 1954. From the original 12 signatories of the CERN convention, membership has grown to the present 20 Member States. CERN currently employs just under 3000 people full-time. Some 6500 scientists and engineers (representing 500 universities and 80 nationalities), about half of the world's particle physics community, work on experiments conducted at CERN.

Table of contents

1 The acronym 2 The accelerator complex 3 The accelerator of the future: the LHC 4 Decommissioned accelerators 5 Computer Science and CERN 6 Member States 7 Footnote 8 External links

The acronym

\nThe acronym originally stood, in French, for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), which was a provisional council for setting up the laboratory, established by 11 European governments in 1952. The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the provisional council was dissolved, and informally changed to Centre Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Centre for Nuclear Research). \n

The accelerator complex

\nThe CERN accelerator complex has six main accelerators:

• Two linear accelerators generating low energy particles for injection into the Proton Synchroton. One is for protons and the other for heavy ions. These are known as Linac2 and Linac3 respectively.\n* The PS Booster, which increases the energy of particles generated by the linear accelerators before they are transferred to the other accelerators.\n* The 28 GeV Proton Synchroton (PS) built 1959.\n* The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), a 2 km diameter circular accelerator built in a tunnel, which started operation in 1971. It originally had an energy of 300 GeV (but has been upgraded several times). As well as having its own beamlines for fixed-target experiments, it has been operated as a proton-antiproton collider, and for accelerating high energy electrons and positrons which were injected into the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider.\n* Isotope Separator On-line (ISOLDE), which was used to study unstable nuclei and first commissioned in 1967. Particles are initially accelerated in the PS Booster before entering ISOLDE.

The accelerator of the future: the LHC

\n\nConstruction of the CMS detector for LHC at CERN\n