The Large Hadron Collider splices: A dive into the very heart of the world´s largest and most powerful particle accelerator

After a brief introduction of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and its main missions, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world´s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, is described, outlining its working principles and main components. It consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. Two high-energy particle beams travel at almost the speed of light before colliding inside huge detectors. The beams travel in opposite directions in vacuum pipes kept at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field generated by superconducting electromagnets. They are built from coils of superconducting cables and are operated at 1.9 K. The main ring magnets in each of the 8 LHC arcs are electrically connected in series to a power source supplying currents up to 13kA.