Large Hadron Collider prepares for second run

Particle accelerator will run at almost double the energy level of the first run

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, has started to prepare for its second three-year run after 16-months of maintenance and upgrades.

Cool down of the machine has already begun in preparation for research to resume early in 2015 following a stop to prepare the machine for running at almost double the energy of the first run.

The last LHC magnet interconnection was closed on 18 June and one sector of 1/8 of the machine has already been cooled to operating temperature. The accelerator chain that supplies the LHC’s particle beams is currently starting up, with beam in the proton synchrotron accelerator on last Wednesday (18 June) for the first time since 2012.

The LHC has been through a major programme of maintenance and upgrading, along with the rest of Cern's accelerator complex, some elements of which have been in operation since 1959. Some 10,000 superconducting magnet interconnections were consolidated in order to prepare the LHC machine for running at its design energy. 

Rolf Heuer, Cern director general, said: “There is a new buzz about the laboratory and a real sense of anticipation. Much work has been carried out on the LHC over the last 18 months or so, and it’s effectively a new machine, poised to set us on the path to new discoveries.”

During its first run, the particle accelerator was used to discover the subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson.

The upgraded LHC will open a new window for potential discovery by providing collisions at energies never reached in a particle accelerator before, enabling further studies on the Higgs boson and potentially addressing unsolved mysteries such as dark matter.