Just three days after its restart, the largest particle accelerator in the world has already conquered a new record: thanks to the updates made in these three years of scheduled stop, the Large Hadron Collider (Lhc) of CERN in Geneva - to which the 'Italy participates with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn) - it has accelerated its two pilot beams of protons to an energy never reached before, equal to 6.8 TeV (Teraelettronvolt).
It did so during the preparatory activities for the next data capture 'Run 3', which is expected to start in the summer.
This was announced by CERN on Twitter.
"The history of Lhc records began in 2009, when we brought our first beam to an energy of 1.18 TeV, higher than Tevatron's previous record of 1 TeV," recalls Jorg Wenninger, coordinator of Lhc operations. .
"In 2010 we went to 3.5 TeV, while two years later we reached 4 TeV, the highest value in the first operational phase of Lhc".
This sequence was interrupted by a first long technical pause aimed at reconsolidating some parts of the magnets.
"This - continues Wenninger - allowed us to reach 6.5 TeV in 2015, still a new world record. We worked in this way for three years until a new stop for a further consolidation of the magnet safety system, which taken today to go one step further up to 6.8 TeV, very close to the 7 TeV energy that Lhc was designed for. This is obviously an important day for us, because a beam has reached this energy for the first time, but it is only the beginning of a long reboot period that will lead us to have collisions at the highest energy in 6-8 weeks. "
