In a joint effort with several collaborating institutes from the United States, a team from Dr. Zvi Citron's group at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev travelled to CERN in Switzerland recently to test a new detector for installation at the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). On this trip an existing detector was refurbished, and a prototype of a future detector was tested in a particle beam.
The detectors are intended to detect “far forward" neutral particles, in particular neutrons that indicate the break of a lead nucleus during lead+lead collisions at the LHC. This is a key ingredient in studying the Quark Gluon Plasma, the extremely hot and dense nuclear state of matter thought to exist in the very early moments of the universe.
The BGU group developed many technical aspects of the detector with a particular focus on ensuring that the detector will be able to withstand the intense radiation.
Dr. Zvi Citron is a member of the High Energy Physics Group in the Department of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences.
