UC Santa Barbara has key role in Large Hadron Collid...(ment was to build part of the particle t...)

By combining the information from all parts of the CMS detector, scientists can reconstruct an electronic image of what happens in each collision.

According to Incandela, UCSB delivered 2.5 million channels of particle detectors, which were meticulously constructed in cleanrooms in the university's physics department. The detectors were of "extremely high quality," Incandela says, noting a failure rate of only 0.02 percent. "Our group then helped assemble and test the detectors at CERN."

CMS is a huge project involving thousands of scientists from all over the world. Many U.S. universities have contributed time and staff to CMS and other LHC experiments. UCSB scientists and other staff members say they are proud to have played a leading role in the construction of the detector's tracking system. One-third of this enormous system was assembled and tested at UCSB. The high-energy physics faculty members say that the contributions of many UCSB students and staff over the past eight years were essential. "I think it's pretty extraordinary what the group has done," says Richman.

"This is a fantastic educational opportunity for our students," Richman says. Now that construction of the detector is complete, the focus of the UCSB group has shifted to preparations for analyzing the vast quantity of data that will start to pour out of the detector in a few months. Eventually, about 1 billion collisions per second will be electronically imaged by the detector. Of these, several hundred images per second will be recorded for detailed study.

The UCSB group is funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy, with additional support from the National Science Foundation. "The university helps us in many ways, but the main funding for the group's operations is provided by the Department o
'/>"/>