Out with the old magnets
Engineers at CERN have begun removing some of the Large Hadron Collider's most important magnets, the start of the most demanding phase of the machine's High-Luminosity upgrade. The 27-kilometre ring is offline for the work.
The magnets being pulled out steer and focus particle beams around the ring. Their replacements are superconducting magnets that produce fields about 40 percent stronger, which lets operators squeeze the beams into a tighter focus.
Why luminosity matters
Luminosity is a measure of how many collisions the machine produces. Squeezing the beams raises the number of proton-proton collisions per second, giving physicists more data from the same running time.
The upgrade is designed to multiply the total data collected over the collider's lifetime. Rare processes — the ones that produce the most interesting results — become measurable instead of merely possible.
Manufacturing at industrial scale
The new magnets are not laboratory curiosities. They are manufactured in series at industrial scale, then tested individually before installation, because a single failed unit can cost weeks of schedule. Cryogenic systems, vacuum equipment and precision alignment all have to meet tighter tolerances than the original machine required.
Engineers describe the work as rebuilding the accelerator from the inside out while keeping most of its infrastructure. The injectors, detectors and cooling plants are being upgraded on a similar timetable, and the whole programme is coordinated so that one late component does not stall the rest.
The collider is expected to return with far higher collision rates and to run for more than a decade afterwards. Until then, the tunnel belongs to the crane crews.
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