Literature in Focus: <br>“LEP: The Lord of the Collider Rings at CERN 1980-2000" and<br> "Elementary Particles", v. I/21A of “Landolt Börnstein", Springer

by Herwig Schopper (Universitaet Hamburg)

Friday 10 Oct 2008, 11:30 → 12:30 Europe/Zurich

Library, bldg. 52 1-052 (CERN)

“LEP: The Lord of the Collider Rings at CERN 1980-2000: The Making, Operation and Legacy of the World’s Largest Scientific Instrument”

Housed by a 4 m diameter tunnel of 27 km circumference, with huge underground labs and numerous surface facilities, and set up with a precision of 0.1 mm per kilometer, the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP) was not only the largest but also one of the most sophisticated scientific research instrument ever created by Man. Located at CERN, near Geneva, LEP was built during the years 1983 - 1989, was operational until 2000, and corroborated the standard model of particle physics through continous high precision measurements.

The Author, director-general of CERN during the crucial period of the construction of LEP, recounts vividly the convoluted decision-making and technical implementation processes  - the tunnel alone being a highly challenging geo- and civil engineering project  -  and the subsequent extremely fruitful period of scientific research. Finally he describes the difficult decision to close down LEP, at a time when the discovery of the Higgs boson seemed within reach.

LEP was eventually dismantled in 2000, enabling the tunnel to be reused for building the next generation machine, the much more powerful Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an upgrade then called LEP3 and foreseen from the beginning. It became operational just as this account was being completed.

Written by the main protagonist responsible for making LEP a reality, this is the definitive inside story of a remarkable machine and the many thousands of scientists and engineers from around the world, whose efforts contributed to the new knowledge it produced.

"Elementary Particles", v. I/21A of “Landolt Börnstein"

Volume I/21A is the first in a series of handbooks on elementary particles. It provides the present state of theoretical and experimental knowledge in particle physics, just in time with the start-up of LHC which promises to settle some of the present-day issues in understanding elementary particles and the fundamental forces between them. It starts with a general representation of gauge theories and the Standard Model which unifies the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions. The standard model of electroweak interactions, and QCD, the theory of the strong interaction, are dicussed in detail. In addition to analytic approaches to nonperturbative QCD, simulations of QCD on a discrete space-time lattice are treated. Results of experimental precision tests for the electroweak standard model as well as of relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions (including a discussion of the QCD matter phase diagram) follow next. Concepts which go beyond the Standard Model, like supersymmetry, strings, grand unification, etc., are introduced, and the interrelation between particle physics and cosmology is discussed. Further topics are symmetry violations (parity P, charge conjugation C, and combined symmetry PC), the mixing of quark flavours, and experimental results on neutrino masses and oscillations. Finally, an outlook on the future of particle physics is provided.

Book cover - “Elementary Particles” LB_I_21A.jpg

Book cover - "“LEP: The Lord of the Collider Rings at CERN 1980-2000" lep_book.jpg